World peace, no less, is what the Bahai faith wants - a widespread and mysterious religion. This is an investigative road movie about a feel-good religion, two overachieving directors, a prophet's great-granddaughter, and a CIA agent. A detective-like quest after the Bahai religion, which originated in Iran some 150 years ago, and ended up building its world center on Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel, - right in our backyard.

Asaf grew up next to the beautiful Bahai gardens, staring out of his bedroom window when the Bahais excavated the entire Mount Carmel and built a secret underground city. As a grown-up he shared his thoughts and fears with Naama. They joined forces to try and find out what, literally, lies beneath the Bahai Gardens – and document it cinematically.

The directors’ mission starts in their backyard, using all their un-polished detective skills to get their hands on as much information about the underground city as possible. They take numerous trips to the Bahai gardens as mere “tourists” and try to find some loop holes which can lead them to the floors below. They put their hands on the architectural plans of the underground city, and an architect’s opinion about what’s ‘between the lines’ of those plans. They meet people who have worked for the Bahai under ground and are willing to share what is down there without revealing their face. They discover a great granddaughter of the founder prophet of this magnificent peace seeking religion who is lost and unknown to the public. The prophet’s family apparently was barred from the faith, and millions of believers do not know about them.

The plot of the story thickens and turns international when the two directors/detectives follow a worldwide espionage affair. They read about Dr. David Kelly, the MI6 agent, an expert on weapons of mass destruction and a Bahai follower, who was found dead in the woods of Oxfordshire, England. Kelly’s death was investigated by Lord Hutton who invited the head of the Bahai in Great Britain to give evidence in the case of Mr Kelly’s death. That evidence remained hidden from the public. It gets even more complicated when they find out that an American CIA agent and Kelly’s translator in Iraq had actually introduced Kelly to the Bahai religion.

The directors meet with a British intelligence analyst, the head of the Bahai faith in England, and an investigator journalist, but they do not stop there - they follow the lead that Kelly was introduced to the faith by the American CIA agent and follow it to the US.
There they meet some elderly and sweet Bahais who knew both Kelly and the American CIA agent but who are not very comfortable to give out ‘classified’ information. It is only then that Asaf and Naama realize that chasing a CIA agent and a dead scientist is a tad beyond their detective skills.

They return to Israel and convince the Bahai administration in Haifa to “show” them around in the undergound city of Mount Carmel.

PRODUCER'S STATEMENT: From Mocumentary to Black Market Documentary
I was surprised to see our film "Bahais in my Backyard" pirated and streamed on the internet after it was broadcast by SBS Australia, but it didn’t look like pure theft, but rather a compliment to the film's humour and lightness.
The next step, several months later, turned to be much more serious. The film was dubbed and streamed by an Iranian website. The dubbing, I am told by friends who know Persian, is very professional. At first, I was honoured by the effort and investment of the Iranian website and only regretted that we were cheated of our royalties. But when one of my friends translated the four-minute introduction the site added to “explain” the film and showed me serious and hefty attacks on the Bahais using excerpts from our film on another Iranian website called Alef, I was much less amused. Taken out of context, everything can be used to serve anything. To use a film which was done with such a light touch, making fun of the serious investigation we set out to undertake, to prove anything about the Bahais, is more than ridiculous.
What a pity the Iranians didn't quite get the point of the film, a mockumentary, in which we make fun of ourselves and our theories. Sense of humour, lightness, I thought, were universal values.

Noemi Schory, Producer


Haifa