The short, ‘Syrian Hero Boy’, was made by Oslo-based self-styled media guerrilla artists, and supposedly showed a young boy rescuing a girl from gunfire.
Now the Norwegian group has come forward to admit they faked the video, filming it over the summer in Malta.
Lars Klevberg, the scriptwriter, claimed the video was a deliberate fake designed to provoke debate about children in warzones.
The 34-year-old director told the BBC: "If I could make a film and pretend it was real, people would share it and react with hope. We shot it in Malta in May this year on a set that was used for other famous movies like Troy and Gladiator. The little boy and girl are professional actors from Malta. The voices in the background are Syrian refugees living in Malta."
Mr Klevberg said the use of guerrilla media tactics was justifiable if it raised awareness of the horrific conditions young people endure during wartime.
"By publishing a clip that could appear to be authentic we hoped to take advantage of a tool that's often used in war; make a video that claims to be real. We wanted to see if the film would get attention and spur debate, first and foremost about children and war. We also wanted to see how the media would respond to such a video," he said.
The reaction in Norway has been very damning of the mockumentary. The country’s Press Association demanded that the filmmakers make a public apology for having duped millions all over the world.
Human Rights Watch, a charity operating in Syria, said that now any video it posts will face unnecessary scrutiny because of ‘Syrian Hero Boy’.
Spokesman Fred Abrahams said: “If their video achieved any short term purposes by directing the attention towards children in war, then it has become overshadowed by undermining people’s trust of professional reporting and consentious fact-based reporting of war crimes.”
The filmmakers issued an apology over the weekend. Producer John Einar Hagen said: “We stand by our good intentions, but we are also sorry if this is creating anger and if it makes documentation and reporting from war zones any more difficult.”
The film's producer John Einar Hagen said over the: “We stand by our good intentions, but we are also sorry if this is creating anger and if it makes documentation and reporting from war zones any more difficult.”
'Syrian Hero Boy' has had more than four million views on YouTube, and made headlines around the world when it was first released.
(H/T: BBC)
