Aspiring filmmaker Rene Dongo and spoken-word artist Sofia Snow teamed up to make “The Countdown,” which won the Youth category in the One Nation, Many Voices online film contest, during their senior year of high school in 2007.
Dongo, who was taking video classes at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, had made some humorous short films and wanted to try his hand at something dramatic. Snow’s piece about the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks presented him with the challenge of making a film about a serious and familiar topic — without resorting to the oft-played images of the Twin Towers falling.
As a non-Muslim, Dongo says he was interested to see how many Muslim filmmakers there are in the United States, and to learn how their religion and culture affect their everyday life experience. In “The Countdown,” the American Muslim experience is treated obliquely, by Snow’s references to the way Muslims in the United States were looked at differently after the attacks.
