Homeland: Iraq Year Zero I & II
By Abbas Fahdel
The eleventh edition of the Arabic Film Week in Barcelona projected an excellent selection this year. Two of the eight programmed films were the Iraqi films, Son of Babylon (2009) by Mohamed Al-Daradji and Homeland: Iraq Year Zero (2015) by Abbas Fahdel. The later, In words of the author, himself “serves to contrast the image of Iraq in Western mass media with the voice of the Iraqi people before and after the war.” said Fahdel at the presentation in Barcelona. Being an Iraqi citizen, who lived the 2003 war on Iraq, and a refugee, I found it to be of the bravesta and best artistic creations that tell the story of the Iraqi people during the invasion. The film is set in two parts that expose the life of an ordinary family, the author’s family, few monthe before the war, year 2002, and the life of the same family two months after the occupation of Iraq on April 9th 2003.
The film went through and overcame many difficult challenges, first was the author’s grief as he lost one of his family members and central voice, in the second part, to the random shooting of US troops. Then was the production and distribution of the film, since the case of Iraq, especially after the invasion, was not an attractive subject matter for TV channels and the big screen. But the biggest challenge was the author’s achievement to lift the question of Iraq from the trivialities of pointing blaming fingers to a deeper and meaningful question: the human condition in the circumstances of an unjust war. So at the end of the journey, the viewer feels the banality of the political debate on freedom & dictatorship or nationalism & occupation; what remains is question of being, the sorrowfulness of unlived lives, confiscated lives and disposable lives of those who live on the margins of the absurdity of war. Probably for this reason, the author avoided intreviewing political figures or adminstrative authorities; what we see and hear are only the views of the ordinary people and families of the many victims.
The film also succeeds in bringing out the many “Iraqs” there are in the one Iraq; in a subtle way, it exposes the diversity of classes and subclasses labelled by their ideology, education, economy and most certainly gender; although women share the same tragedy, they see/show things differently. While men reflect on the situation of the country as a state, women express the most intimate fears and worries of the private space.
Part of the quest of the Iraqi people’s story is extraordinarily engaging the viewer in juxtaposing realities inside and outside screen, which highlights the complexity of the refugees, whose concept of reality is in constant shifting and clicking between homeland and home.
The documentary was well received by critics and merited by international film festivals such as Public Award, Festival Internacional de Cine, Mexico 2016; Jury Prize, Milano Filmmaker Festival, 2015; Award of Excellence (International Competition), and Citizens’ Prize, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, 2015; Sesterce d’Or (Best Feature Film Award – International Competition), Festival Visions du réel, 2015 and others. But the value of this documentary lies in the reverence for the humanity of the Iraqi human being as it discloses his voice, which was silenced and represented in mere figures of collateral damage.
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