Tragically, the title of James Longley's beautifully shot 90-minute documentary refers to not only the state in which he found the Iraq during the two years he spent there shooting over 300 hours of footage, but the structure the violent factionalism that divides Iraqi Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds imposes on his film. Ironically, dividing his work into the three equal but very separate fragments seems to be the only way Longley can talk about Iraq as a whole. In the first segment, "Mohammed of Baghdad," Longley closely follows Mohammed Haithem, an 11-year-old boy whose father disappeared during Saddam's brutally repressive regime. Mohammed works for his uncle, a mechani...
Released:
2006
Rated:
NR
Length:
94 mins