Bombs, war, angry bearded men, shrouded sobbing women, shattered cities: Iraq, as seen through the eyes of the western media these days. These images are juxtaposed with those from the fifties and seventies: films with frivolous music, unveiled women who study; elegantly dressed men in Bagdad, a modern city. How did it come to this? Shuttling between Auckland, Moscow, Paris, London, Zurich, Buffalo, and Iraq, Samir presents a moving homage to the frustrated democratic dreams of a people successively plagued by dictatorship, war, and foreign occupation.
Weaving together the ironic, wistful, and witty testimonies of Samir’s relatives with rare documents from private and state archives, IRAQI ODYSSEY is a riveting epic that creates a genuine people’s history of Iraq.
IRAQI ODYSSEY is the Swiss entry for this year’s Academy Awards. It has been awarded the best Asian Film Award and the NETPAC award at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival and the Panorama Audience Award at the Berlin International Film Festival.The film was also an official selection at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.
IRAQI ODYSSEY is authored and directed by Samir. Executive producer is Joel Jent, with Werner Schweizer, Herbert Schwering, and Furat al Jamil serving as producers.
