"What side on earth do I work for" is a 2 part documentary that attempts to undermine the neoliberal promise of transparency. The first part presents an account of an email exchange between the filmmaker and a self-proclaimed Yamani (pre-messainic figure in Shia Islam). While the second part follows the filmmaker’s attempt at testing the recent Lebanese rights to information law by documenting a request for air pollution information submitted to the ministry of environment.

Serial killers, or anything to do with sex. These are the topics that filmmaker Marc Isaacs’ producer thinks he should be focusing on if he wants to have any chance of getting financing. Frustrated and recalcitrant, the documentary maker decides to create a film about and with the people around him: the builders who are putting up a new fence in his garden, his Pakistani neighbor, a homeless person from Slovakia whom he temporarily takes in, and his Colombian housekeeper, who has just lost her mother. The film starts out as a classic documentary, but the viewer gradually gets the feeling of watching a scripted film. The theme of hospitality—both topical and important but hardly spectacular—is given an unexpected twist at the end that turns the entire film upside down. Isaacs thus criticizes the predictability of commercial documentaries; in contrast to the trend of tailoring facts to media formats, he presents fiction driven by authenticity. He shows how complex authorship can be—and that it is precisely what produces quality.