Iraqi cinema makes a comeback at Greek film festival
FEATURE |
THESSALONIKI — Iraqi cinema scored a notable first at this month’s Thessaloniki International Film Festival in Greece, with one film up for an award and a retrospective of the young director Mohamed al-Daradji.
But although Ebrahim Saeedi’s Mandoo (Tired) did not win, both he and Daradji showed that independent Iraqi cinema — whose history dates back more than a century yet for years was a propaganda tool of Saddam Hussein’s regime — has made a comeback.
“From 2005 to 2008, no films at all were produced in Iraq because of sectarian violence but things are changing,” Daradji, whose film Son of Babylon was shot in Iraq and produced in Europe and the Middle East, told AFP.
The critically acclaimed movie follows an old Kurdish peasant woman and her unruly 12-year-old grandson Ahmed in the south of the country three weeks after the fall of Saddam.
The pair are searching for Ahmed’s father, who was a soldier in the Iraqi army during the first Gulf War in 1991 and never came home..... MORE
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20101221com3.html
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