A still from the video of the CSIS interrogation of Omar Khadr, the Toronto-born man accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan. (Festival du Nouveau Cinema)

The most shocking part of the new documentary about Omar Khadr's 2003 interrogation by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in Guantánamo Bay isn't the scene when the adolescent breaks down and repeatedly cries for his mother. What will likely leave many viewers incredulous is the amateurish behaviour of the CSIS agent who interviews him.

'He is supposed to be a senior agent who knows a great deal about Khadr's family. But he doesn't even seem to know how to conduct an interview.'

— Director Luc Cote, on one of the CSIS agents who interrogated Omar Khadr

"It's a bit scary. The agent's sarcasm and teasing are unbelievable. He is supposed to be a senior agent who knows a great deal about Khadr's family. But he doesn't even seem to know how to conduct an interview," says Luc Côté, the Montreal-based co-director of You Don't Like the Truth: 4 days inside Guantánamo. "He seems to think that if he gives him a Subway sandwich, he'll talk. He comes off as being a bit ridiculous."

Now 23, Khadr, whose case has sparked controversy for nearly a decade in this country, is imprisoned in Cuba because the U.S. government maintains he killed a U.S. soldier in July 2002. They want him tried as a war criminal.

Côté and his co-director, Chilean-born Montrealer Patricio Henriquez, got access to a seven-hour video of Khadr's four-day CSIS interrogation. In 2008, the Supreme Court of Canada ordered the Canadian government to turn over documents and video material pertaining to Khadr's case to his lawyers. Khadr's lawyers released 10 minutes of the tape to journalists back in 2008, but Côté and Henriquez appear to be the only Canadian media professionals who took the time to analyze the entire grainy surveillance tape.

Filmmaker Luc Cote. (Festival du Nouveau Cinema)

"We watched it hundreds of times to try to figure out exactly what was said," says Côté. "Because of our equipment, we were ultimately able to make a full transcript of the interrogation. We are the first to do this. But it took us two years."

The result is an engaging documentary, very sympathetic to Khadr's case, which weaves footage of the bungled CSIS interview with commentary from his lawyers, a psychiatrist who works with victims of torture, an official from the UN High Commission on Human Rights and Gar Pardy, the retired director general of Canadian Consular Affairs. Pardy, clearly troubled by the Khadr case, was responsible for helping Canadians in difficulty overseas when the young man was imprisoned.

According to the film, when Khadr was first imprisoned in Guantánamo, the American government didn't allow diplomats to see prisoners, only non-diplomatic officials such as CSIS agents. But Khadr didn't know this. Because the CSIS agent doesn't identify himself as such, Khadr initially believes he is a Canadian diplomat who has come to help him.

The unnamed CSIS agent, who is accompanied by a CIA official, clumsily attempts to elicit some sort of guilty plea from Khadr. When Khadr figures out that the man he believes to be his Canadian saviour is actually an interrogator, he breaks down. In what is perhaps the most heart-wrenching part of the film, the young man lifts up his shirt to show the agents his bullet wounds, says he's afraid of being tortured again, and then breaks down in sobs. After that, he refuses to co-operate, which frustrates the CSIS agent. "I'm no doctor, but I think you are getting good medical care," he tells Khadr.

In order to regain Khadr's trust, the agent tells him that he needs his help to find his mother and sisters in Pakistan because they are in danger; this story comes off as half-baked and the young man clearly doesn't believe a word of it. Later, the agent ridicules Khadr's pleas for protection from the Americans and tells him to stop "whining and denying what happened," and "to take ownership and responsibility of what happened."

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that CSIS violated the rights of Khadr during the interrogation. But the Supreme Court also overturned lower-court orders that the federal government must try to repatriate the Toronto-born Khadr from Guantánamo. Last week, Khadr's lawyers told the Globe and Mail that he could be repatriated to Canada as part of a plea deal that would allow the Obama administration to avoid the international notoriety of a Guantánamo war crimes trial of a child soldier.

Filmmaker Patricio Henriquez. (Festival du Nouveau Cinema)

The filmmakers make a compelling case for Khadr's release from military prison. They argue that there is no concrete proof that he threw the hand grenade that killed the U.S. soldier. You Don't Like The Truth also stresses the fact that Khadr was a minor, not a hardened terrorist, when the killing allegedly occurred.

"I don't know if he killed that soldier, and I don't know what I would have done in his situation," says Henriquez. "But he was 15 years old at the time. According to the international convention Canada has signed, he is a child soldier and needs to be protected. Canada isn't respecting our signature of that convention."

The filmmakers paint a portrait of a young man who is a victim of the U.S. government's post-9/11 anti-terrorism policy, the Canadian government's indifference and the shady dealings of his own father, Ahmed Said Khadr, an al-Qaeda sympathizer who appears to have used his son as a pawn in his dealings with Islamic terrorists.

Even Damien Corsetti, who was a U.S. interrogator at Bagram prison – where Khadr was detained before going to Guantánamo – is dismayed at his treatment. Corsetti, who describes himself as a monster in the interrogation room, went easy on the young man: "When I saw him at Bagram, he was a typical 15-year-old kid. He was still a child. That was what was prevalent in him, the child,” Corsetti says in the doc.

"Canadian people need to look at themselves and figure out who they are," Corsetti later claims. "There have been elections since Omar was captured, so now ultimately the blame lies on the Canadian people. Why is it that I, as a cold, callous son-of-a-bitch, had more compassion for that boy than his own people?"

You Don't Like The Truth: 4 days inside Guantánamo debuted at Montreal's Festival du Nouveau Cinema and will be shown at a special screening on Parliament Hill on Oct. 20 at 7:30 p.m. The film will open across Canada in selected theatres on Oct. 29.

Patricia Bailey is a writer and broadcaster based in Montreal.