Tales of the Wounded Land

Chronicles of everyday life in Iraq before and after the U.S. invasion.

From their 'Purple House' in the South of Lebanon, French-Iraqi director Abbas Fahdel and his Lebanese wife, the painter Nour Ballouk, start exploring a multifaceted country that seems to be on the edge of the abyss.

Yara lives alone with her grandmother in an isolated valley, most of whose inhabitants have died or emigrated abroad. One day, Yara meets a young stranger.

Among the countless Syrian citizens who have fled their country, about one-and-a-half-million have relocated to neighboring Lebanon. In this patient, heart-rending portrait, Iraqi-born filmmaker Abbas Fahdel, director of the epic Homeland (Iraq Year Zero), settles in with a community of refugees living in a tent camp in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley, most of them children.

The Mesopotamian Marshes, at the delta of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, in the south of Iraq. This is where Mastour and Zahra grow up. Shortly after their marriage, Mastour and Zahra are forced to separate when the Gulf War breaks out. On the battlefield, Mastour befriends Riad, a young soldier from Baghdad. Mortally wounded, Mastour makes Riad promise to protect Zahra when the war is over. When Riad arrives in the village, he falls deeply in love with Zahra. But unable to bear the loss of her husband, Zahra shuts herself off. In this completely foreign environment that is hostile to this newcomer, and as a new conflict is on the verge of inflaming the whole area, Riad will do the impossible to find his place.

Living in exile in France for the past 25 years, Abbas Fahdel last year made Retour à Babylone, the occasion to return home, be reunited with his childhood friends and explore a reality that was now alien to him. In this film, Fahdel's camera shows us Iraqis in another light and the hopes and fears of these men and women who escaped the nightmare of a dictatorship only to be mired in chaos. He is better equipped than anyone for this task. He is both an "outside" angle of vision and a brotherly view. An Iraqi among Iarqis, he embodies a reference point in the turmoil. His presence and commitment during the past year, his receptivity during those months when everyone was preparing for war explains why his camera is never indiscreet or prying.

Back in his home town of Babylon after a long exile, the Iraqi-born director Abbas Fahdel asks himself: "What has become of my friends? What has life here made of them? What would my life have been like if I hadn't chosen to build my destiny elsewhere?"