Synopsis
Chronicles of daily life in Iraq, before and after the American invasion of 2003. This powerful collective fresco has the breath of a slow-moving saga, like the river that flows through Baghdad. The tragedy and dignity of the Iraqi people emerge on screen in moments of great intensity. A work of reference for understanding the history and present of the Middle East. In this first part, Abbas Fahdel describes the daily life of a family, mostly his own, as they prepare for war with apprehension, but also with the hope of seeing democracy established after the fall of the dictatorship. What’s the worst that could happen to them?
A word from Tënk
In this first part, "Before the Fall", Abbas Fahdel carefully captures the suspended temporality of a country on borrowed time. Zooming out, zooming in, from the landscape to those who inhabit it, as if to avoid the cut, as if to preserve the continuity of a world that, tomorrow, will never be the same again. The Rossellinian reference to "year zero" in the subtitle is painfully apparent in the attentive portrait of children and teenagers whose smiling, graceful faces and bodies already seem marked by the fate that awaits them. And this lends the film its tragic horizon.
Vladimir Léon
Filmmaker and producer
Watch Homeland, Iraq Year Zero - Part 2 : After the Battle
