Forbidden Lie$ directed by Anna Broinowski is a dramatized documentary investigating Norma Khouri and her 2003 ‘true life’ best seller Forbidden Love about the honor killing in Jordan of her best friend named Dahlia. The book is full of fabrications, many of which surround the author’s own biography. This major revelation set Forbidden Lie$ in motion and is a journey into the strange mind of Khouri and her many identities, and the identity of the Middle East through westerners eyes. Forbidden Lie$ presents provocative and confronting ideas about the identity of Khouri and the orientalist view of the Middle East through the use of documentary codes and conventions.

The western viewers depict Islamic society as being ruled by oppressive moral absolutism and a violence sanctioning patriarchy. Opening scenes of Forbidden Lie$ confirm orientalist views beliefs of the Middle East. A typical view of Jordan away from modernization is shows as the camera pans through the streets of Jordan’s capital, Amman, with non-diegetic sounds of cow bells in the background, conveying a feel of an old, undeveloped world which convinces the viewer that they have entered a hostile, un-civilized domain. The imaginative construction Khouri portrays of Jordan and the Middle East is not questioned by viewers because the facts presented add to what we have been told and conform to our own ideologies. This is why Khouri’s story and representation of the Middle East was accepted so widely and with such scant skepticism.

Angry Jordanian journalist Rana Husseini and other Jordanian people in the documentary offer us a