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Award-winning Iraqi film finally shown in
Kurdistan region
16.4.2008
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April 16, 2008
Erbil-Hewler, Kurdistan region 'Iraq, --
Four years after filming his searing account of the
fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraqi filmmaker Mohammed al-Daradji
has finally seen his award-winning movie screened in
his homeland 'the other Iraq'.
"Ahlaam" (Dreams) was screened to a select audience
in Baghdad before being given three showings last
week in Erbil, capital of Iraq's semi-autonomous
Kurdistan region.
Daradji was in Erbil to mark the occasion.
"I'm very happy that this movie, which covers events
on a historical day that will forever remain in the
Iraqi memory, is being screened," the director told
AFP.
"The movie has participated in so many international
festivals and now it has finally come to Iraq," he
said,www.ekurd.net
adding that until now
the political and security situation in Iraq had
been considered too fraught to screen the movie. |
Iraqi filmmaker Mohammed al-Daradji addresses
reporters before the screening of his movie "Ahlaam"
(Dreams) in the Erbil, , the Iraqi Kurdistan's
capital on April 2. Four years after filming his
searing account of the collapse of Saddam Hussein's
regime, Daradji has finally seen his award-winning
movie screened in his homeland 'Iraq' |
"Ahlaam" revolves around the lives of three people
in a mental asylum after suffering for years under
Saddam's regime.
Ahlaam, a bewildered young woman who witnessed the
violent arrest of her beloved on their wedding day
and Ali, a former soldier now shell-shocked and
traumatised by the American bombings, are patients
in the asylum.
Dr Mehdi, a hard working idealist, works at the
institution and longs for a free Iraq where humanity
is cherished not brutalised by hatred and fear.
The institution is bombed during the 2003 US-led
liberation and their lives are thrown into turmoil.
The movie opens with images of American bombs
raining down on Baghdad in 2003, interspersed with
the terrified faces of the inmates in the mental
institution.
The movie tracks the lives of the three in the wake
of the bombings, with main focus on Ahlaam. Played
by Acil Adel,www.ekurd.net
she escapes the hospital
and has to negotiate the dangerous landscape of the
newly-invaded capital.
She suffers further brutality when she is raped,
first by looters, and then by American soldiers in
what is a scarcely concealed allusion to what the
director believes is the fate that has befallen
Iraq.
Daradji had been living in exile in Europe to avoid
persecution from the Baathist regime when the war
broke out. In 2003 he returned home to make a film
about the plight of ordinary Iraqi people in the
aftermath of the liberation.
He shot "Ahlaam" in the streets of Baghdad in
extremely difficult conditions, which included
curfews and electricity cuts.
He and members of his crew were detained at various
times both by insurgents and by the US military,
neither side believing that they were simply making
a film.
His determination paid off. Since he completed the
100-minute feature film in 2004, it has played at
international festivals around the world, including
in Cairo, Dubai, Carthage, Rotterdam, Munich,
Moscow, New York, Seattle and Tokyo, said the
director.
It has also been commercially distributed in Spain,
the United States and Britain.
The movie has won numerous awards, including the
best Arabic film at the Cairo International film
festival in 2005, the special jury prize in the
Arabe du Monde Cinema in Paris 2006 and the best
actor award at Carthage, also in 2006.
The filmmaker said he was disappointed that cinema
has come to a near standstill in all of Iraq, except
in Kurdistan region, the Kurdish north of Iraq,
since the US liberation.
Only one cinema hall remains in Baghdad, showing
B-grade movies in the afternoons, while most cinema
halls across the country have closed their doors.
Falak al-Din Kakayi, minister of culture in the
Kurdistan Regional Government, praised the film.
"It records the important moments of the most
critical period in the political life in Iraq," he
said.
"I hope all Iraqis will see this movie to know where
they came from and what they are reaching towards,"
the minister said.
Daradji, meanwhile, is working on a new project,
which he also plans to shoot in Baghdad, despite the
fact the streets are even less secure than when he
was out with his camera crews in 2003.
Production on "Babel Mourns a New Day" is set to
start later this year. For now he is saying little
about the project except that it focuses on life in
post-liberation Iraq.
In a sign that the situation is anything but normal
in Baghdad, leading "Ahlaam" actor Mohammed Hashim
was unable to reach Arbil for the screening of the
movie.
Fierce fighting between militiamen and US and Iraqi
forces in the Sadr City Shiite bastion where he
lives, linked with a curfew, prevented him from
leaving his home.
Copyright, respective author or news agency, AFP
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