The films

Two cuts, built from the same declared register system. What you are watching is told to you on every frame.

00 Read this first

Three registers

The film has three visual registers and the audience is told which one they are in at every moment. This is the film’s signature, not its limitation — Flee and Waltz with Bashir both won their reputations on exactly this move.

[R] Record

Real footage, real photographs, real audio, real documents. Presented plainly. Unaltered.

[X] Reconstruction

Synthetically generated imagery for what was never filmed: Sadr City streets in 2005, the water trucks, the night patrols, the Starship corridor. Rendered in a declared, consistent, openly non-photoreal style — a look the audience reads as memory, not footage. The style itself does the labelling in the moment.

[T] Testimony

People on camera now, speaking for themselves. Boone’s own recorded voice throughout, never simulated saying anything he did not say.

What these cuts are, exactly

Every frame you will see is reconstruction. No archival footage has been licensed yet, so wherever the cut needs record — Tahrir Square in October 2019, the Golden Shrine, Boone’s own photograph — it holds an honest card naming what has to be cleared, rather than substituting something that looks close enough. Nothing has been passed off as archive. The testimony cards work the same way: not one of those interviews has been shot.

Every clip, prompt and voice is logged →

On the voices

Every voice in both cuts is synthesised, and every one is labelled on screen while it speaks. Boone Cutler’s lines are his own written words read by a stand-in voice, which the reconstruction brief permits only once the estate’s digital-likeness consent is executed — so these cuts are development material, and his authentic recorded voice replaces every one of those lines before anything is shown publicly. That substitution is the first job in the production order, and it is what the audio archive exists for.

01 PSYOP'ER — SIZZLE REEL

The sizzle reel

The tone piece. Three and a half minutes built so that a financier who stops watching at ninety seconds has already seen the thesis and the craft. One instrument, entering once, at the Tahrir cut. Nothing before it.

2:161280×720 · 2.39:1 19.5 MBCaptions on Download

Shot list and transcript — every cue, with its register

0:00 A1 Somehow, I miss the war.

0:05 A2 It's one large box of pain.

0:08 A3 There is no mission here.

0:11 shot —

0:12 card PSYOP’ER

0:15 B1 Sergeant Boone Cutler ran Psychological Operations in Sadr City, Baghdad.

0:19 B3 Two and a half million people. One militia. Four Americans with a loudspeaker.

0:24 shot —

0:25 C1 Whispering at night with a few people was more powerful than a loudspeaker in broad daylight.

0:30 [T] slot TEAM VOODOO — surviving member, on camera TESTIMONY NOT YET CAPTURED.
“Everybody thinks PsyOp means lying to people. It’s the opposite. You can lie exactly once.”

0:35 legend —

0:40 [R] slot PHOTOGRAPH — Sadr City from the air, 2005 ARCHIVAL. TO BE LICENSED.

0:43 B2 —

0:46 [R] slot ARCHIVAL — dismounted US patrol, Sadr City ARCHIVAL. TO BE LICENSED.

0:48 shot —

0:49 C3 The Americans brought your water. — No. Then it’s ours, not theirs.

0:53 shot —

0:55 P8 You were not willing to pay a bribe for something that was already yours.

0:60 C4 —

1:02 C2 —

1:04 C5 —

1:07 [R] slot ARCHIVAL — the Golden Shrine, before and after ARCHIVAL. TO BE LICENSED.

1:10 D1 We missed it by three minutes.

1:14 shot —

1:16 D2 —

1:18 [T] slot TEAM VOODOO — the same man, not talking TESTIMONY NOT YET CAPTURED.
“(silence)”

1:21 D3 Is there a God for me anymore?

1:25 shot —

1:27 E1 I never heard about democracy from my family. Not from my school. Not from my religion.

1:33 E2 The old people were too broken in their minds. So we were in the middle. Between the past, and the thing we wanted.

1:40 [R] slot REAL FOOTAGE — Tahrir Square, Baghdad, October 2019 ARCHIVAL. TO BE LICENSED.

1:45 [R] slot PHOTOGRAPH — Boone Cutler, Sadr City, 2005 ARCHIVAL. TO BE LICENSED.

1:51 black Are you ready to know some secrets?

1:54 card PSYOP’ER

1:56 card Boone Cutler died 18 September 2025.

1:59 card He finished the book. He did not get to see the film.

2:02 card From the estate of Boone Cutler and Born Between 2 Generals.

2:05 declaration —

02 PSYOP’ER — THE WATER SECTOR

The water sector

The proof-of-concept scene. One sector, two days, no combat, seven speaking parts. It exists to demonstrate the only thing a buyer needs to believe: that persuasion is more cinematic than gunfire. It also ends in a win, which the rest of the film mostly does not.

6:431280×720 · 2.39:1 50.1 MBCaptions on Download

Shot list and transcript — every cue, with its register

0:00 card PROOF OF CONCEPT

0:04 legend —

0:10 Scene 1 EXT. SADR CITY — RESIDENTIAL SECTOR — DAY

0:13 B2 Heat that has weight. Trash piled around the receptacles, never in them — the first quiet clue that nothing here is what it looks like.

0:23 P1 Cutler dismounts with his team and his interpreter, Jamal. They are here for a mortar point of origin. That is not what they find.

0:31 W2 A woman stands in a doorway holding a child who is too still.

0:38 W1 Behind her, an empty water tank.

0:43 JAMAL Five days.

0:47 CUTLER Five days of what?

0:52 JAMAL No water. Five days.

0:57 W2 Cutler looks at the tank. Looks at the child. One hundred and thirty degrees.

1:02 Scene 2 EXT. SECTOR — CONTINUOUS

1:06 P3 He works the crowd. He does not ask about the mortar. He asks about the water. The answer arrives in pieces, from three different people, none of whom will say the militia’s name out loud.

1:17 P3 The water is free. The government gives it. The drivers will not fill the tanks unless they are paid. The money goes to the Sadr Bureau.

1:26 CUTLER Has anyone gone to the DAC?

1:30 P4 Silence.

1:34 ABU HASSAN The council takes care of the council.

1:40 CUTLER You have a representative. That’s what he’s for.

1:46 P4 Abu Hassan’s look is not hostile. It is patient, the way you are patient with a child.

1:52 Scene 3 INT. DISTRICT ADVISORY COUNCIL — DAY

1:55 W3 Cool. Ceiling fan. A council representative with clean hands and a nervous mouth.

2:02 DAC REP The driver cannot stop there. It is not safe for him.

2:07 W3 Cutler says nothing. Just lets the silence sit, watching the man’s hands.

2:14 P5 Ten minutes later, the council representative is on a telephone in the next room, speaking quietly, not knowing the door is open.

2:21 Scene 4 EXT. SECTOR — THIRTY MINUTES LATER

2:25 W4 A water truck. Arriving without incident.

2:32 P6 —

2:38 W4 Nobody shoots at it. Nobody stops it. It was never unsafe.

2:46 P6 Cutler watches it, and the audience understands the whole war in one shot. The danger was the excuse.

2:53 Scene 5 EXT. SECTOR — LATER

2:56 W5 The citizens come back from the council in a group, exactly as Cutler told them to. They are still holding their complaint forms. Filled out. Signed.

3:06 JAMAL They were told to leave.

3:10 CUTLER Told how?

3:13 P7 Jamal doesn’t answer. One of the men lifts his shirt. Nothing there, no wound. He is showing where the rifle was pointed.

3:21 W5 The forms are still in their hands. Nobody took them. Nobody would touch them.

3:28 Scene 6 EXT. FOB — NIGHT

3:32 CUTLER (V.O.) The Americans brought your water. — No. Then it’s ours, not theirs.

3:38 CUTLER (V.O.) Jaysh al-Mahdi stole your water. — True. And the man who repeats it is dead by Friday.

3:45 CUTLER (V.O.) You have rights under your government. — Nobody has ever had rights here. It sounds like a joke.

3:53 P8 He stops. Starts again. Writes four lines.

3:57 CUTLER (V.O.) You were not willing to pay a bribe for something that was already yours. You went together. The water came. You did that.

4:09 P8 He looks at it a long time.

4:14 CUTLER (V.O.) And it can’t come from me.

4:19 Scene 7 EXT. SECTOR — NEXT DAY

4:23 B3 The vehicle with the loudspeaker. The team. And Abu Hassan, holding a single sheet of paper, reading glasses, unimpressed.

4:31 C4 Cutler hands him the microphone. Not the script — the microphone.

4:38 C2 —

4:43 ABU HASSAN “You were not willing to pay a bribe for something that was already yours…”

4:52 ABU HASSAN “You went together. The water came.”

4:60 P9 He gets to the third line. His voice changes. He is no longer reading it. He is saying it.

5:07 ABU HASSAN “…You did that.”

5:13 C5 A beat of nothing. Then, from a rooftop, one voice. Then a doorway. Then the street.

5:22 P9 They are not cheering for Cutler. They do not look at Cutler. They are cheering for the old man, and for themselves — which is the entire point. And Cutler, standing off to the side, out of frame of his own operation, lets it happen.

5:36 Scene 8 EXT. SECTOR — MOMENTS LATER

5:40 TEAMMATE That was a good day.

5:44 CUTLER It was one sector.

5:48 CUTLER Somebody’s kid was listening.

5:55 E1 Hold on the boy.

6:03 Scene 9 EXT. BAGHDAD — TAHRIR SQUARE — OCTOBER 2019

6:07 [R] slot REAL FOOTAGE — Tahrir Square, Baghdad, October 2019 ARCHIVAL. TO BE LICENSED.

6:16 E2 The old people were too broken in their minds to understand freedom. So we were in the middle. Between the past, and the thing we wanted.

6:26 card FOURTEEN YEARS.

6:31 black —

6:32 declaration —

03 What the reel deliberately does not do

No expert

No talking-head explaining what PsyOp is.

No maps

No map graphics, no news-anchor montage.

No al-Sadr

He never appears on screen. Not generated, not archival, not implied.

No score early

The film’s argument is that persuasion is intimate. A percussion bed under the craft section would contradict it in thirty seconds.