Netflix enlists the 'E-Team' in human-rights doc

The news of American journalist James Foley's execution by an Islamist fighter rocked headlines in August, made even more appalling by the graphic video of his beheading that accompanied them.

But his courageous work lives on in the new documentary E-Team, which follows four human-rights workers in the Middle East and is now playing in New York. The film, which adds additional theaters and arrives on Netflix Friday (6 p.m. ET / 3 PT), includes footage shot by Foley in Libya in fall 2011, a year before his abduction in Syria in November 2012.

"We really hope that that footage and his work on the film honors what he was doing with his life and work: trying to get the stories of struggling Libyans and Syrians out into the world," says filmmaker Katy Chevigny (Election Day), who directed the project with Ross Kauffman, an Academy Award-winner for 2004 documentary Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids.

Shot over two and a half years, E-Team chronicles the efforts of Anna Neistat, Ole Solvang, Fred Abrahams and Peter Bouckaert, members of the Human Rights Watch organization's Emergencies Team, tasked with documenting and reporting war crimes. The film sends viewers to the ravaged frontlines of Libya and Syria, interviewing victims of brutal attacks ordered by leaders Bashar al-Assad and the now-deceased Muammar Gaddafi.

Naturally, asking grieving and traumatized victims to recount such atrocities can take its emotional toll, but it also has a profound impact on the E-Team, Neistat says.

"It's important to emphasize that we do see horrible things and horrible suffering, but we also see some of the most amazing things," Neistat says. "(There's) incredible resilience and strength in ordinary people that are facing extraordinary circumstances. It helps to put our own life in perspective."

Editing the documentary, Chevigny and Kauffman pored through more than 350 hours of footage, shot by Foley, Kauffman and videographer Rachel Beth Anderson overseas and inside the E-Team's homes in Paris, Berlin and Geneva.

"It's funny, because people talk about the war zones, but for the E-Team, letting us into their homes was probably more difficult than following them in the field," Kauffman says. "When we started the film, we told them we'd be in their homes and with them 24/7," filming their time spent with family and crashing on their couches.

"In the beginning, at least, I was quite self-conscious about that," says Solvang, Neistat's husband. "To their credit, they were very good about making us at ease, so eventually we completely forgot about it and were just acting normally."

Although it took them a few viewings to separate their experience making E-Team from the film itself, they're ultimately pleased with the result.

"It's very difficult to tell a story about human rights work in a non-boring way, because a lot of our work is very routine and it's hours, weeks and months of this meticulous investigation," Neistat says. "To tell a story that makes it interesting and human, and thus allows people to relate to it on a very different level, that's quite an accomplishment."