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...
Sunday, June 17-------At the risk of being a moth-eaten cliche, the term "fog of war" is now routinely used to describe a state where political, strategic and moral choices in areas of conflict become shaded by the exigencies of human response to violence and an abandonment of an ethical compass that determines policy and behavior. This "fog of war" has certainly descended on the chaos that is now unfolding in the Middle East, both in the five-year conflicts in Afghanistan...
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...
Just in Time for Election Day, Historic Grassroots TourTo Bring Acclaimed Documentaries To American CitiesBuilding on the extraordinary success of its massive citywide festival during the Republican National Convention, The Imagine Festival of Arts, Issues & Ideas today launched the Films To See Before You Vote Tour, which will bring a series of acclaimed, issue-oriented films to communities in key battleground states prior to Election Day.In an entirely new twist on traditional film distributio...
