By Maria Esteves – March 25, 2012
The 16th New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival 2012 (NYSJFF2012) closing night premiere documentary of IRAQ n ROLL, directed by Gill Gaon, was held at the Center for Jewish History, Thursday, March 22, 2012. Hosted by the American Sephardi Federation (ASF) in association with Yeshiva University Museum, the Pomegranate Award presented by ASF director Lynn Winters and renowned sculptor Oded Halahmy, Pomegranate Gallery, OH Foundation for the Arts, Inc., we...
By Maria Esteves – March 25, 2012
The 16th New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival 2012 (NYSJFF2012) closing night premiere documentary of IRAQ n ROLL, directed by Gill Gaon, was held at the Center for Jewish History, Thursday, March 22, 2012. Hosted by the American Sephardi Federation (ASF) in association with Yeshiva University Museum, the Pomegranate Award presented by ASF director Lynn Winters and renowned sculptor Oded Halahmy, Oded Halahmy Foundation for the Arts, Inc., went to...
Director: Koutaiba Al-Janabi.
Leaving Baghdad is a road movie that follows Sadik, the personal cameraman to the leader Saddam Hussein, at the end of the nineties. Sadik is trying to escape the grip of the regime, being pursued from country to country, encountering smugglers and crooks on his journey. Sadik suffers from paranoia and constant fear. The Iraqi secret police are after him because he is carrying evidence of the atrocities committed by the regime. Sadik is dreaming to go to London, to join his wife who is, however, unwilling to help. In his despair and loneliness, Sadik writes letters to his son, Semir. These letters turn into a confession and reveal Sadik's past and the real reason for his fleeing , the endless waiting and his paranoia.
‘SON OF BABYLON' (2010) is a fiction film based on reality about three
weeks following the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the beginning of the
Iraq War. Writer/director Mohamed Al-Daradji spent seven years on this
poetic masterpiece that touches on the timely and hypersensitive subject
of the Iraq War and the country now trying to pick itself up from
devastation and ruin.
This is a story not of war, however, but of the broken family and a lost
civilization. I...
‘SON OF BABYLON' (2010) is a fiction film based on reality about three weeks following the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the beginning of the Iraq War. Writer/director Mohamed Al-Daradji spent seven years on this poetic masterpiece that touches on the timely and hypersensitive subject of the Iraq War and the country now trying to pick itself up from devastation and ruin. This is a story not of war, however, but of the broken family and a lost civilization. It is a dark road movie followin...
‘SON OF BABYLON' (2010) is a fiction film based on reality about three weeks following the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the beginning of the Iraq War. Writer/director Mohamed Al-Daradji spent seven years on this poetic masterpiece that touches on the timely and hypersensitive subject of the Iraq War and the country now trying to pick itself up from devastation and ruin. This is a story not of war, however, but of the broken family and a lost civilization. It is a dark road movie following a ...
Mohamed Al-Daradji explains to audiences in Q and A how his film is about 3 weeks
after the invasion of Iraq by USA in 2003. 'It is not about Iraq in 2010, it is about Iraq
in 2003' He explined to audiences that he felt the people should know about this period
in Iraqi history. His next film will be about Iraq today.
STAY TUNED FOR PRESS CONFERENCE INFO. ON
Mohamed Al-Daradji'
Premiering here at the Montreal World Film Festival in the same week that saw U.S. President Barack Obama deliver a television address announcing the end of combat operations by the U.S. military in Iraq, the timing could not be better for the new American documentary film CAMP UNITY.
After more than seven years of bloody combat, the American role in Iraq has shifted to one of helping build a solid democracy from the ruins of a devastated nation. What role the 50,000 U....
In a first for the Berlinale, a film from Iraq had its world premiere last evening in the Panorama section. SON OF BABYLON, co-written and directed by Mohamed Al-Daradji, is a stirring drama about coming to terms with tragedy and moving forward despite the burden of personal loss. Filmed in stark poetic set pieces, the film follows the journey of a Kurdish grandmother and her precocious grandson as they travel (mostly on foot) to discover the fate of the boy's father, who has been miss...
War zone filmmaking: Going into battleBy Kellie SouthanSo you’re an independent filmmaker and you’ve got it pretty tough. Filmmaking is an expensive business, and you have to tell your story with a limited budget. Worse, you’ve got to fight tooth and nail to find the revenue in the first place. If you work long and hard enough, you might finish your project on schedule and then it’s up to you to promote it, get it seen, take it to festivals, find a distributor and garner support. Not exa...
Baghdad International Film Festival is staged Dec. 16 to 19.Films for the fest will mainly be submitted from Egypt, Jordan and Iran, according to Iraqi helmer Dr. Abdul Basit Salman. Egypt plans to send 27 films, most of them shorts made by students at the High Institution for Cinema, although the country's two main television channels and some private production houses will be sending in features, he said.The last time a film festival was held in Baghdad was in September 2005 when 58 locally ma...
Saturday, December 2-----It certainly makes logical sense that one of the world’s largest documentary film festivals would have a number of films that focused on the troubles in Iraq, but the sheer volume of them has been, at least for this journalist, an eye-opening and yet terribly difficult experience.
IDFA has spared no one with some excellent and heart-rending films that continue to haunt.
The films dealing with the Iraq war, at least the ones that I’ve seen, fall into two distinct ...
Saturday, June 17----As the US Congress debated this week on the future of the war in Iraq, four documentaries presented at the SILVERDOCS AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival provide a more in-depth understanding of the cost of this bloody conflict to the American economy, the American morale and America’s standing in the world.
While the Bush Administration offers platitudes of bringing Western style democracy to the Middle East, the true politics of that region are “petro politics...
BEST OF BAGHDAD – THE RESURRECTION OF IRAQI CINEMAat the 26th CAMBRIDGE FILM FESTIVAL (6th–16th July 2006, Cambridge Arts Picturehouse)www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.ukIraqi Cinema has had a chequered history – from all-singing all-dancing melodramas of the 40s to lavish vanity projects funded by Saddam Hussein in the 80s to total extinction during the Gulf Wars. Now amidst the tensions of the occupation the resuscitation of Iraqi Cinema has gradually begun, heralding a new phase in the slo...
TURTLES CAN FLY won the GOLDEN SHELL FOR BEST FILM at San Sebastian.Bahman Ghobadi, (the director's) Statement.Three days after the collapse of Saddam, I went to Baghdad to show my film Songs of my motherland as it was being released. Just as the superpowers were sending heavy weaponry to Iraq, my purpose was, on a symbolic level, to contribute artistically to what was going on.With the small DV camera I was carrying, I shot for a few weeks what I had witnessed in Baghdad, as well as in the othe...
Today’s Iraq Provides Setting for Landmark Syria/UK Co-ProductionWriter/director Nabil Maleh’sTHE HUNT FEASTCurrently filming in Syria and Lebanon. To Be Unveiled At Cannes 2004The story of an escaped high-ranking officer of the former Iraqi regime on the run with millions of dollars earmarked for an insurgency campaign against the occupying American forces, is the subject of a landmark Syrian/UK co-production feature film currently shooting in Syria and Lebanon, which gets its first unveili...
