Syrian 'hero boy' video shot in Malta

In just a few days, a video purporting to show a Syrian boy under gunfire pretending to be dead in order to rescue a young girl has been viewed over 5 million times on YouTube. However, it has now been revealed that a group of Norwegian filmmakers made the video on location in Malta this summer with the intention of being presented as real.

Lars Klevberg, a 34-year-old film director based in Oslo, wrote a script after watching news coverage of the conflict in Syria. He told the BBC that he deliberately presented the film as reality in order to generate a discussion about children in conflict zones.

"If I could make a film and pretend it was real, people would share it and react with hope," he said. "We shot it in Malta in May this year on a set that was used for other famous movies like Troy and Gladiator," Klevberg said. "The little boy and girl are professional actors from Malta. The voices in the background are Syrian refugees living in Malta."

Were they comfortable making a film that potentially deceived millions of people? "I was not uncomfortable," Klevberg said. "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."

In fact the film received funding from the Norwegian Film Institute (NFI) and the Audio and Visual Fund from Arts Council Norway in October 2013. The filmmakers say their application for funding made clear they wanted to upload the film to the internet without making it obvious it was real or fiction. They also claim that those who financed it were aware of, and supported, these intentions.

"The children surviving gunshots was supposed to send small clues that it was not real," said producer John Einar Hagen. "We had long discussions with the film's financiers about the ethics around making a film like this."

"It was not a cynical way to get attention. They had honest motivations," Ase Meyer, short film commissioner for the NFI told BBC Trending. "I was surprised people thought it was real. When I see the film, the little boy is shot but he keeps on running. There is no blood on the child." The NFI awarded €33,000 towards its production. "It was a really low budget film."

Since being uploaded to YouTube on Monday the video has been watched more than five million times and inspired thousands of comments. There has been a big debate about whether it is genuine. How those viewers will react to learning that it's a work of fiction remains to be seen. "We are really happy with the reaction," Klevberg said. "It created a debate."

In a comment, the Malta Film Commission said it  did not support this production with any of its incentives for the film industry.