By Linda Winsh-Bolard
Oscar nominated documentary where Iraq situation in 2003 is seen through the eyes of representatives of the three major Iraqi groups: Sunna, Shia and Kurds.
Before the invasion of 2002 three things seems to have united the representatives of all those groups: poverty, sense of oppression and dislike of Saddam Hussein. After the invasion three things still unite them: poverty, lack of freedom and dislike of the US.
Young Mohammed lives in Baghdad, he remembers that everything was beautiful, the river, the bridges, the city. Then the war came underneath him as the earthquake and over him in the sky and nothing was good anymore. He does not expect to ever see his father again, his father was a lieutenant in the police in Saddam’s Iraq, later he saw him on TV when his hair and mouth was searched, and that was that. He did not come home after the Americans arrived. Mohammed lives in dire poverty with his mother, uncle and grandmother. He is eleven-year-old, illiterate and working in an auto garage to help support his family. He seems not to be able to learn, but it could be just that he was never able to stay at school long enough. As his tale unravels, his first statement where he describes his boss being like his father changes into a portrait of cursing cruel man. Mohammed’s schooling used to be full of songs for Saddam, now the songs are about the new president and Koran. His biggest expectation is that nobody would beat him and curse him.
In the South cities of Naseriyah and Najaf, the Shia, the most religious group, rule and nothing had changed. After the invasion poverty and fear brought new power to the Shia. The Mehdi army, a masked militia of Moqtada Sadr, was formed to “cleanse” the city of western customs. The film shows the Mehdi riding to the market to catch purported alcohol sellers; the brutality of kidnapping men at gun points, beatings, the pleading of a wife for her husband who, she says, was selling auto scraps. The anger, bewilderment and despair of the captives who were oppressed under Saddam and are now oppressed under the US and the Shia. The Shia are a fierce Islamic practitioners of self-flagellation, prayers and unending fight against unbelievers. Yet there is a sequence where the factions of Shia, Sunni and Democracy come together trying to overcome the new oppression and elect their own representatives rather than living under the appointed council.
The Northern, Kurdish, part is a combination of dying dream of a young boy Suleiman, who wishes to leave the sheep herd, go to school and become a doctor but is forced to stay working as a brick cutter and sheepherder to support his old father, an Imam, and his father’s dying dream of free Kurdistan The film shows the election where the illiterate cast votes for the Kurdish party while outside the hall others, who want to vote, are pushed around. Kurdistan is free of war at the moment, but poor, uneducated and sold out. The father sees the situation more clearly than many, he sees that the:” Kurdish leadership had grown fat and down there people are still crying in poverty” and he will not cast his vote for those who live well of the poor.
That is the best summary of all what the invasion and subsequent war achieved, I ever heard.
Women are almost completely absent in this film, and I suspect that their role in the post –Saddam Iraq was to return to kitchen, mosque and bed services. Although the film has no important female film crewmember and men tend not to see women as a part of ruling forces.
The content is a startling testament to American failure, lack of understanding of cultural differences and mocks the current propaganda line. We promised democracy, delivered catastrophe and they know it, cynically or sadly discuss it, and are prepared to get rid not only of us but of all that might represent us.
The film is well shot; some images are truly beautifully etched against the sky, some belie the commentary. But it is not able to make the deeper connections understandable, be it the coming to power of Saddam, or his forced post execution martyrdom invisible to the Americans, or the rifts between the three fractions. And part of the problem is the absence of women, their education and role in the society, as well as of the class system.
The film was shot in 2003 but did not get released until January 2007, and that works against it. Among the multitude of documentary films about the war in Iraq, from the Gunner Palace to the Voice of Iraq (all shot by people in action) this is one of the most concerned with the people who live there, comparable to Laura Pointras’ My Country, My Country, and that is its strength, but we learn too little about the people it attempts to portray.
Film was nominated for Oscar and won at Sundance Film Festivals as well Human Rights Watch International Festival.
James Langley director/camera/ music, edited by: James Longley, Billy McMillin, Fiona, Otway, Obsazeni Mohammed Haithem, Suleiman Mahmoud.
