Leaving Baghdad is the debut feature of London-based Iraqi, Koutaiba Al-Janabi and is a deeply personal and emotive examination of one individual’s complicity in the worst excesses of the Hussein period…
Interview – Leaving Baghdad Director, Koutaiba Al-Janabi
Koutaiba Al-Janabi is an Iraqi-born cinematographer and director whose first feature film Leaving Baghdad is a deeply personal examination of collaboration and guilt in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq…
Victims
Imagine that all the people who believe everything they read in the Daily Mail got together and decided to sort out the injustices they see all around them. The country would descend into chaos and people would face punishment dished out by the mob rather than the courts …
The Box
The war in the early 1990s and the break-up of the former Yugoslavia casts a long shadow over the culture of the Balkans. It’s no surprise that film-makers in the region are creating work which reflect the time…
By Day and By Night (De Dia y De Noche)
The world’s population is getting bigger and bigger every day. Our resources are threatened and in some towns and cities there are simply too many people for the local infrastructure to manage …
Mesocafe
The war in Iraq and the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) have been a source of inspiration for a number of films including In The Valley of Elah, The Hurt Locker and the hugely disappointing Green Zone. All of these come from a Western (American) perspective…
How To Start A Revolution
It always feels strange going to the cinema to see a documentary feature. When I think of factual films I tend to look towards Channel 4 or BBC 2 rather than a night out at the movies…
Amnesty (Amnistia)
As I expected, my time at the Raindance Film Festival is exposing me to films I would never normally choose to go and see. Not because they aren’t worth seeing but simply because they would never normally have come onto my radar, not being amongst the blockbusters showing at the local multiplex…
Hollow
In the past couple of years there has been an explosion in the number of “found footage” films. Mostly these are films which look like they have been recorded on a camcorder and discarded after a horrific event of some description…
Interview – Fambul Tok Producer, Libby Hoffman
Fambul Tok is a moving documentary about the power of forgiveness and reconciliation which held its UK premiere at the Raindance Film Festival…