April 29, 2009 02:30PM EDT

Q&A: Team Qatar

How often do you hear "Show us your socks!" called out at a film festival Q&A? Check out Team Qatar and you'll get the joke. Following Monday evening's screening, director Liz Mermin was joined by Alex Just, the springy young Brit who coached the Qatari national debate team at the heart of the documentary. In the film, five multicultural 15- to 17-year olds living in the education-focused Arab emirate endure a crash course in debating that takes them from Doha to London and New York. The kicker? Their very first competitive debate is at the World Schools Debating Championship in Washington, DC.

Mermin was approached by the Qatar Foundation about making the film because she had already proven herself an ace at handling culture clashes (her doc about an American-style beauty school in Afghanistan, The Beauty Academy of Kabul, played at the Festival in 2004). "I was interested in the notion of kids from the Middle East arguing about things," she said. In the months that she followed them, though, Mermin captured much more—turning Team Qatar into both a suspenseful competition movie and a revealing examination of youth in the oft-misunderstood Arab world. Some of the film's funniest moments come when the kids—who each have different degrees of worldliness—walk the chaotic streets of Manhattan for the first time. "Where are you from?" asks one New Yorker. "Qatar," one of the girls answers. "I'm so dumb, where is that?" he responds.

Whether they're debating kids from Botswana about euthanasia, candidly talking among themselves about sexuality, or getting their cartoon portraits drawn in Central Park, the kids are always compelling to watch. Just revealed that the five team members were selected from 3,000 kids he and his team of Oxford grads trained in Qatar. "There's no experience with kids in the classroom questioning authority," said Just. "It was a steep learning curve that had pretty good results."

We're not going to tell you what happens, of course, but audience members wanted to know the prizes available to competitors in the debating championship. "You get made fun of in a documentary all over the world," quipped Mermin. "Just kidding."

"There's not much money involved in school debating," said Just.

 

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Tickets are available for two remaining Team Qatar screenings on Thursday and Saturday.

Read more Festival Q&As.