Discoveries from Iraq World Cinema

The story of the series revolves around a mafia man named Ayham Aref, who is having difficulty managing his personal life with his family and the criminal organization in which he works and heads.

Documentary about the expeditions of the third marine division in Iraq.

A man's fate is to accept loneliness and to accept loneliness is to accept death. A short of collected clips a man took whenever he felt alone.

A century after the establishment of modern schools and four decades after the adoption of Article 15 of the Iranian constitution. The right to mother tongue education has not made any official progress and is in a state of ambiguity. Despite many obstacles and threats to life, civil society activists and language teachers continue helping children and students who have been deprived of learning, reading, and writing in Kurdish.

From the bleeding stillness of the night, day is birthed.

Dunia is a 17-year-old girl. After her uncle raped her, she becomes pregnant and seeks help in one of the shelters in the Kurdistan region of Iraq/Sulaimani and secretly plans to have an abortion.

Lemons are being passed around. Their juice relieves the burning in the mouth and nose. It is April 17, 2011, the last day of public revolt before the suppression of the Iraqi Spring. Amid the protesting crowd, breathing the air laced with tear gas, are two musicians: Hiwa K with his harmonica, Daroon Othman on the guitar. They play the movie score from "Once Upon a Time in the West", that alarming melody of two dissonant notes, immediately recognizable to everyone in the streets of Sulaimany, Kurdistan. As Hiwa K plays the harmonica, the tear gas invades his airways; music and the political situation coincide in the performer’s body. He subsequently compiled video footage shot by others in the documentary This Lemon Tastes of Apple. The title ties the events of 2011 back to Saddam Hussein’s genocidal campaign against the Kurds in 1988. The gas that was used back then smelled of apples.

Thousands of Iraqis have been displaced by sectarian violence and have had to flee their homes, seeking refuge in safer parts of the country. Al Hani’s short film is a portrait of Abu Ali, a refugee from Kirkuk currently living in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Kerbala. A peace-loving man with a keen sense of justice, Ali struggles to survive and provide for his family under the difficult circumstances they now find themselves.

With kidnappings and violence on the rise in their neighborhood, a Mandaean family from Baghdad makes the difficult decision to leave their home of 30 years to live in Damascus. Zuhairi’s powerful film documents the family’s painful process as they sell their belongings and divide up their house so it can be rented out. Finally, the film records their dangerous trip to the Syrian border and their arrival at their new home.

Director Hiba Bassem returns to Baghdad from Kirkuk in 2005 to finish her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts. This video diary chronicles her first year in Baghdad as she searches for a place to live, looks for work, attends college, deals with family problems and struggles to come to terms with her position as a woman living on her own. Baghdad Days won a New Horizon Silver Award at the Al Jazeera International Film Festival and a Golden Award at the Rotterdam Arab Film Festival in 2006.

Opened in an old house in 1992 by a close-knit group of Iraqi artists and writers, the Hiwar Center is a gathering place for those who are interested in literature, film, music and art. This wonderful short work showcases the center and explores its role as a vibrant meeting-place in the heart of Baghdad.

Dr. Nabil is a gentle and committed surgeon and father who works at a small, understaffed Baghdad hospital suffering from a lack of equipment and medicine. Though other doctors have been killed or have fled the country in fear of their lives, Dr. Nabil has decided to stay. He worries, though, what effects the atmosphere of violence and brutality will have on his young son.

Living in a house with her sisters, mother and brother without electricity and surrounded by constant danger, director Hiba Bassem ruminates about what the past three years have brought to those who are living in Iraq.

Two men: one wheelchair-bound and with a radio dangling around his neck, tuned to news of violence in Iraq; the other lies on his bed, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. Amid a radio broadcast about the spiraling violence and the collapse of society, the latter fantasizes about destroying the radio.

Inspired by the life and poetry of Sargon Boulos, this film explores exile, memory, and the enduring connection between a person and their homeland.

A short biographical film about Iraqi poet Badr Shakir Al-Sayab, that charts the pivotal moments in a remarkable life. Despite his short life (he died at 38) he remains of the most influential Arab poets of the 20th century. The title ‘Rain on Jeekor’ invokes both Al-Sayab’s most famous poem ‘Rain Song’ and his beloved hometown.

Captain Mahmoud gets leave during the Iran-Iraq War to attend his daughter's birthday, but he has to cut his leave short because he is assigned a mission to the front.

Ali, a young Arab man living as an expatriate in Duhok, leads a lonely and isolated life, trapped in a heavy daily routine and struggling with a language barrier. For seven months, he has tried to control his dreams through ChatGPT, hoping to see his deceased mother, yet he remains haunted by a recurring dream of Sonia, a character from a video game.

“Seven Seconds” tells the story of a writer who faces trouble with the police because of his writings.

A boy whom his routine was white, faces black color

August 3, 2024 marked the tenth anniversary of the genocide committed by the so-called “Islamic State” against the Yazidis in northern Iraq. The terrorist militia wanted to wipe out the religious minority. Thousands of Yazidis were killed, enslaved or displaced. The documentary accompanies young Yazidis who survived this genocide. Four siblings tell of violence, captivity, enslavement and humiliation, but also of courage, hope and new beginnings.

Sharwal is the name given to the traditional trousers that are worn by men in Kurdistan. Meticulously pleated and made from tightly woven wool, Sharwals can be filled with air and used to assist in flotation over bodies of water. The air bubble created when it is submerged into water has both a form and a function that helps crossing deep and broad waters. It further represents the connection between an informal local knowledge passed down within the larger community and the practicality of the garment being used to facilitate movement across terrains and even, to survive.

In the final film of the Encounters on the Tigris trilogy, Abbas travels by boat to Al-Amarah to discover the rich diversity of flora and fauna along the river, before travelling to Al-Hammar marshes where locals reflect on the politically motivated drought of 1991, and the ongoing effects on local communities’ socio-economic wellbeing and access to water.

Traces artist Sherko Abbas’ journey along Iraq’s Tigris River in June and October 2022 in search of its mythical past and present ecological reality. The film presents encounters with different communities who live along the river: with farmers, fishermen, scholars and musicians who share oral histories of the river in the form of songs, anecdotes and stories that reveal how the dramatic effects of climate change across the region are interwoven with the country’s ancient culture and unique historical experience.

As for human natures that denies the life's end and loves the life's adventure, the newborn child loves life's challenges. Hence, coming into life's end immediately is awful unless involving into its difficulties. But there are some circumstances makes human to close the womb that he came from.

Sometimes, in some situations, we cannot point the finger at the real criminal, even if we know who he is... and we assume a second personality that does not resemble us in front of him, of our own free will. By repeating that situation and the multiplicity of criminals in our world, we have several personalities, such as schizophrenia.

An Iraqi youth attempt to portray the problems and deviations of Iraqi youth in the late fifties. The major cinemas rejected the film's screening because it did not meet the usual length, as its duration did not exceed forty minutes. However, the Regent Cinema agreed to screen it with another foreign film.

The greatest Kurdish poet Merwan Berekat in the ruins of his city. In the background, we see a wedding that took place 15 years, before the start of the war and 27 years before the creation of the film. A question arises and may never be answered: What happened to the bride, the groom, and everyone else in the wedding video?

A little boy attempts to escape from an ISIS terrorist camp in Nineveh, Iraq.

Adapted from an unfinished graphic novel, Baghdad Graphic shows the struggle of Iraqi journalists in the midst of the country's countless invasions.

The pains of not having an identity or a home in the orphanage are the stories that are not included in the framework of any narration.

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The story tells the life of a photographer who lived in areas of Iraqi Kurdistan and in areas where there was genocide. He has photographed the people of the villages and towns in the areas. And after a long time more than 25 years, the negative films passed from one owner to another. Recently one from the village of Asker found out about those pictures. then he starts searches from one village to another looking for the relatives of those missing in Anfal Military operations. He wants to give them the photographs of their missing people. With every photo, there are touching stories. For example, an old man and an old woman lost their five children in 1988 and have no pictures. Thirty years later, They are able to see pictures of their five children.

The film illustrates life in a village on the border between Iraq and Iran, an eight-year war zone during the 1980s. These people were once suffering from having to relocate to the cities during the war, but now enjoy living on the land they feel closest to. Despite heavy daily tasks, people appreciate being alongside nature, relatives, and friends.

Wisam, a soldier in the Iraqi counter-terrorism service, had left his child during the war, and as fate decides, he happens to find a left-alone infant. Wisam’s fellow soldier gets killed by a sniper, and thus, Wisam gets trapped inside the house with the starving infant, the sniper, who killed Wisam’s fellow soldier, turns out to be a 17-year-old girl who wants her infant back.

From their 'Purple House' in the South of Lebanon, French-Iraqi director Abbas Fahdel and his Lebanese wife, the painter Nour Ballouk, start exploring a multifaceted country that seems to be on the edge of the abyss.

Kidnapped from her village in North Iraq by ISIS, just a few months after marrying Mohammed, a 25- year-old Yazidi woman named Ellan is released from captivity and returns home with a newborn child from the ISIS father.

This short tells the story of the life of an elderly mother and father. They want to portray their lives through a video camera in order to send it to their son who lives abroad in solitude. In the 90s, the majority of young Iraqi Kurds migrated because of the civil war and poverty.