Iraq, Switzerland, Arabic - 90 min
Feature Documentary
TOTAL BUDGET
US $371,839
CONFIRMED FINANCING
US $40,000
CONFIRMED FINANCIAL PARTNERS
-Rober Bosch Film Prize 2020
-International Media Support (IMS)
-DMZ Industry
-French cultural center in Baghdad
-Investment IQ producer Zahraa Ghandour
CONTACT
zahraaghandour@gmail.com
+9647814490956
The demon of death has been following her since childhood. With time, the demon grew to be as expansive as her city, Baghdad. Zahraa goes on a journey to find a lost girl to release her nightmares.
Zahraa, 30, is a Baghdad-based an actress. She confronts daily news about the killing of women in her city. It tortures her in her waking state and her slumber. She goes back to the house where she was born and raised. It is her maternal aunt Hayat's, 65, home. She is the woman whose hands Zahraa was born into, as she is a certified midwife who enjoys nothing other than smoking cigarettes while watching horror films and hearing children cry upon their birth. Zahraa confronts her aunt about a little girl, Noor, who went missing from their house in Zahraa’s childhood. She believes her aunt was involved. She had seen that girl on national TV talking about how her family threw her out on the street, haunting her ever since. Zahraa goes on a journey to search for Noor alongside her friend and mentor Hanaa Edwar, 74, a pioneer human rights activist. Between confronting her family history and searching for Noor, Zahraa comes up against her nightmares and the daily stories of women getting killed by their families in different ways in Baghdad. Will the excuses for why girls are killed stop in Baghdad? Will the nightmares stop if the missing Noor is found?
I am making this film to tell my personal story and the stories of other women whose lives and survival have depended on each other. Our lives, as girls and women here, are determined from the first moments we are born into this world. Many girls are unwanted since birth. I witnessed the disappearance of a girl from my aunt’s house, my childhood house, who was abandoned by her birth mother and drugged by the family that took her until she became disabled. I was too small then to reach out to her and to feel for what she was going through. Now, I go on a journey of searching for her through my first film. The creative team working on this film is a local Iraqi one. I believe that making a film here will honor our vision and our experience. We all belong to an emerging generation in Iraqi filmmaking, having our first experiences together to express ourselves and produce a representation of the identity, which we feel is all that is left for us after all the wars and crises that we lived and are still living through.
It’s been four years since I started this professional and in-depth working relationship with Zahraa Ghandour in the cinema business. She had impressed me at the time as an activist for women's rights in Baghdad, as well as an intrepid journalist in the Iraqi media. Then, she convinced me to cast her in the lead role in my last feature film Baghdad in My Shadow, and then an even closer collaboration began. During this time, I discovered her ability to quickly assess the situation and draw efficient conclusions for further activities. I also liked the fact she was able to understand many social and political contexts and to incorporate them into her work as an actress. Excellent conditions for realizing a cinematic work, not only in front of the camera but also behind! What is extraordinary about Zahraa's project is that her two protagonists (herself as an actress and as a director) come from different social classes, but can assert their claims through the question of women in a joint film. For me, as a producer and as a fellow filmmaker, this project is extraordinary and urgent to implement.
2021: The Blind Ferryman
2021: Ils giacomettis
2019: Baghdad in My Shadow
2018: Chris the Swiss
2017: Go Home
2016: Offshore - Elmer und das bankgeheimnis
2014: Dora oder die sexuellen neurosen unserer eltern
2014: Dawn
2014: Iraqi Odyssey
2013: Mon père, la révolution et moi
2013: Die libelle und das nashorn
2012: Operation Libertad
2012: Once I Entered a Garden
2010: Escher, der engel und die fibonacci-zahlen
2009: Räuberinnen
2007: Die Chronomanen
2006:Das fräulein
2006: Nachbeben
2005: White Terror
2005: Snow White
2004: Die letzte mauer
2004: Strähl
2004: Muridi - aus zürich
2003: Tarifa Traffic - Tod in gibraltar
2003: ZwischenSprach
2002: Forget Baghdad
2002: Aline
2000: Summertime
2000: Norman Plays Golf
1998: Projecziuns tibetanas
1997: La eta Knabino
1997: Angélique
1996: Take off from the Sand
1996: Miel et cendres
1993: Babylon 2
1992: (It was) Just a Job