Homeland: Irak Année Zéro

We feel that this film, certainly one of the most important of recent years, was made by the author-director with a mixture of pleasure and pain: the pleasure of filming his country and his loved ones, and the suffering of seeing the country delivered to chaos and violence, a violence that some relatives of the director will be the first victims. Taking us from Baghdad to the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Abbas Fahdel, the director, ran great risks by making this film and was also facing a personal tragedy. More than just a beautiful and moving saga, his film is a necessary and a reference work to understand the history and present of the Middle East. This fresco of 334 minutes immerse us in the life of an Iraqi family - the director's family - for two years: before and after the US invasion. The film exposes, with the breath of a saga, the tragedy and the dignity of the Iraqi people in moments of great intensity. It also draws a sensitive portrait of a country over whom we had so far a simplistic vision, forged by two decades of media lies and propaganda. The stereotypes promoted by the medias leave room for real people : men, women and children who become very familiar. Combining the family romance epic novel, scenes of everyday life and the chronicles of war, the small and the great History, the film enters our consciousness to the point of making us feel like we share the lives, fears and hopes of the protagonists.

This monumental film has just won the Sesterce d'Or (Best Feature Film Award) in the international competition of the prestigious festival Visions du Réel (Nyon International Film Festival, Switzerland). An impressive family saga, Homeland (Iraq Year Zero) will make you stop watching any major studio creation inspired by the war in Iraq. It takes you on the other side, miles away from propaganda and stereotypes : just the normal life of human beings like anywhere else, trying their best everyday. A moving tale about the truth from within, at the opposite of the characters we have been presented by the medias and American movies.

Homeland (Iraq Year Zero) is the story of a country in turmoil, told through the experience of one family in particular : the director's family. But this is not a weighty history lesson. The major events takes place off-screen. We experience their repercussions on the life of the protagonists. Without avoiding the ceremonial events (birth, death, marriage) that usually punctuate this sort of family chronicle, the author-director focuses on the textures of daily existence. His project stands as a monumental act of testimony, teeming with evocative incident and Proustian detail. 'Homeland' means here both 'home' and 'native land'. It is a film about a home, a country and real life looked at through the eyes of real people. There's no heroism here, just the everyday life of normal people confronted to ordinary and extraordinary events. All human life is here: tragedy, comedy, death and fleeting moments of daily existence. Inevitably much of the story deals with the war, and it is fascinating to see how things evolve, coming up to a brutal, fatal term which leaves us heartbroken.

Seen at the Viennale 2016: The filmmaker Abbas Fahdel did a great job in doing this documentary about the story of his family during the years that led to the fall of the Hussein regime. The movie is not one minute too long. It is easy to watch - like a long story of gossips. And this is also my main problem with this movie. So many stories are told to the man behind the camera. Very often stories about how another person was killed, robbed or otherwise treated badly. Can I believe these people shown? I am sure, some of them exaggerated, because in my experience everybody exaggerates when he tells a story to another person. What also remains as feeling is that every bad situation that hits an Iraqi is provoked by an enemy. There was not one Iraqi who put some blame on himself that they endured a dictatorship, that they got robbed (by their own people), that the streets are unsafe etc. All the time others have done something terrible wrong. Another problem of this documentary is that it seems that Abbas Fahdel seems to be part of an intellectual family. And so we see mostly the world through their eyes. We do not see the separation between possessors and non-possessors. Fahdel gives the impression that there is no tension between the middle class and the poor. The months before the beginning of war everybody was kind of excited - like expecting the beginning of a soccer world championship. The whole documentary is too biased. No wonder, because it is the story of one family. But if you have the chance to see this documentary - with all its shortcomings - go and see it!!!