White Right: Meeting The Enemy

WHITE RIGHT: MEETING THE ENEMY

Emmy Award winner for Best International Current Affairs film

BAFTA Award nomination in the Current Affairs category

RTS (Royal Television Society) Award in the Best Director category

Women in Film and TV Award winner in the BBC News and Factual category

PeaceJam Special Jury Prize winner at Monte-Carlo TV Festival

Rory Peck Award winner in the Sony Impact category for Current Affairs

Asian Media Award winner in the Best Investigation category

Frontline Club Awards finalist 

When Deeyah Khan was six, her father took her to her first anti-racism rally.  A Pakistani immigrant to Norway, he promised her that things would get better and that the skinhead gangs that terrorised their family and families like them would soon find themselves relics of past prejudices, that bigotry belonged in history, that tomorrow would be a more tolerant time.

Three decades on, and we’re still waiting for tomorrow.

With a US president propagating anti-Muslim propaganda, the far-right gaining ground in German elections, hate crime rising in the UK, and divisive populist rhetoric infecting political and public discourse across western democracies, Deeyah Khan’s WHITE RIGHT: MEETING THE ENEMY asks why.

And to do so, she first addresses who.

Following the lauded JIHAD – in which she spoke to radicalised British Muslims who had fought in the name of jihad on the battlefields of Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia and Chechnya and now found themselves full of regret – Deeyah joins the frontline of the race wars in America. She sits face-to-face with fascists, racists and the proponents of the “alt-right” ideologies that have propelled Donald Trump to the presidency. From Breitbart’s darling, Richard Spencer to Jeff Schoep, leader of America’s largest neo-Nazi organisation, Deeyah’s need to find the deeper human causes of horrific social forces opens a different possibility for connection and solutions. Rather than dismiss these men as monsters, she’s determined to discover the men behind the masks.

As she tries to get beyond the scare stories to the real stories, behind the headlines to the human beings, Deeyah finds her own prejudices challenged and her own tolerance tested. And that’s before she finds herself in the midst of a race riot, at the now-infamous Unite the Right march in Charlottesville, Virginia. With her own safety in jeopardy, Deeyah experiences the vitriol from both sides in an increasingly violent and vicious divide. Though Martin Luther King Jnr said that “love is the only force capable of turning an enemy into a friend”, can Deeyah find it within her to try and befriend the fascists she meets? Will her empathy extend to neo-Nazis? Even when they declare, to her face, that she is, effectively, sub-human?

Urgent and resonant, WHITE RIGHT is Deeyah Khan’s most personal film yet. Praising WHITE RIGHT: MEETING THE ENEMY, The Times of London said: “Khan uses hard and soft skills to discover what drives such hatred and forces people to face her, their so-called enemy: it gets under their skin and yields results… Deeyah Khan is an extraordinary filmmaker.”

White Right: Meeting The Enemy received its world premiere on ITV in the UK on Monday 11th December 2017.

White Right: Meeting the Enemy is available to watch internationally:
TVO (Canada)

The film has previously been available to stream on:

ITV (UK)
DR (Denmark) under the title ‘Det hvide højre – møde med fjenden’
NRK (Norway) under the title ‘Deeyah Khan: I møte med fienden’
SBS (Australia)
VPRO (Netherlands)
Netflix (USA & UK)

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To screen White Right: Meeting the Enemy in universities, colleges and other institutions across America please contact WMM (Women Make Movies) here.

For events or screenings outside of the United States of America, please get in touch using this form.


“Part investigative journalist, part almost psychotherapist, Khan uses hard and soft skills to discover what drives such hatred and forces people to face her, their so-called enemy: it gets under their skin and yields results.”

– The Times


“An entirely worthwhile film and – given that Khan has received death threats in the past – a brave one, too.”

– The Guardian


“Deeyah Khan is an extraordinary film-maker. It was she who interviewed former Muslim radicalisers in Jihad, reduced one to tears of regret. In White Right: Meeting the Enemy she interviewed American far-righters and neo-Nazis and again reached the parts that others do not. Khan bravely made this film after she was interviewed on TV about multiculturalism, then received a barrage of hate calling her a “shitskin incubator” who should be “raped, tortured and killed”.”

– The Times


“This film stood out for its fearless immedi​acy of approach and its confident and totally engaging voice: an exciting directing talent, brilliantly deployed in front of camera too.  Fascinating encounters and brilliant interviews reframed the familiar, by sitting down with and trying to understand the human beings behind the rise of the far right.” 

– Royal Television Society Jury


“The filmmakers put themselves in an awkward and extraordinary situation which challenged both the subject and them – and the viewer in a way. Deeyah’s personality and her extraordinary interviewing technique, in what must have been emotionally very difficult circumstances, really shone a light on these characters that we generally don’t know much about.  The film is an exceptional example of how a reporter-led story may add to the storytelling rather than detract from it. Although the topic has been covered a lot in recent years, they got under the skin of these characters in a way that no-one else has.”


Photos from White Right: Meeting The Enemy.