By Elena Mortelli
From Cinemavvenire.it
19 November 2003

Bahman Ghobadi, the Kurdish-Iranian director known in Italy for the film “A Time for drunken horses,” the first Kurdish film of Iranian cinema, has produced his most recent documentary shot in Iraq, “War is Over…?” which will be presented at the Asian Film Mediale festival.

This is a 55 minute documentary that was shot in secrecy during the spring of 2003, after the beginning of the conflict in Iraq. He filmed while his movie “The Songs of my Mother’s land,” which was made 10 years ago (set during the Iranian-Iraqi conflict), was being screened for the first time in Baghdad.

Ghobadi is a renowned anti-Saddam director, which is why his films were never shown in Iraq. This year, after the liberation of the country from dictatorship, his film “The Songs of my Mother’s land,” was consequently screened there. The film has already been shown at the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival in 2002. The documentary begins with images of this great event for the Kurdish filmmaker, depicting moments of the film being screened in a hall in Baghdad. This occasion is just the beginnings of the journey that Ghobadi will take through Iraq, together with his faithful DVCam, venturing to the Kurdish frontier.

This is because he was not able to film in the city of Baghdad (except for the presentation of his film), and was forced to fold the campaign, where he tried to collect testimonies and images of this war-torn country.

Together with his dvcam Ghobadi travels to the hinterland of Iraq, which has been gutted by bombings, still full of weapons, bombs and all sorts of American military equipment recovered from battlefields. The images are commented on in English, which is supposed to explain the point of view of the director—it is said with sarcasm that this is what remains of a country destroyed by the Americans and by Saddam Hussein.

What drove the director to make this documentary? It was done very hastily, first of all shot very close to the situation, without being able to achieve the necessary distance from the events to come up with a distinct point of view. On the other hand, it was an opportunity to have the material “living” and to make known to the world the so-called “peace” in Iraq. His cynicism is already demonstrated within the title of the documentary, apart from the cynical comments in the film.

The narrating voice reminds us tirelessly that war is never-ending, especially for the real victims: the civilians. For those who were born and lived through war, it has paradoxically another meaning: gaining a shred of work (for example by selling weapons abandoned by soldiers, as the images suggest at a bazaar where every sort of war material was available).

The film displays the testimonies of children, the elderly, women, and men, who give details of the number of family members killed in the various wars and killings during the long years of dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.

The director’s dvcam shows some scenes of a recently discovered mass grave, with human skeletons of those buried alive. What Ghobadi tries to ask within this 55-minute report of extremely harsh imagery, is what is the true meaning of the word “peace” in a country where people do not know about the coverage of war, they only knew the continuing pain of loss they feel for their loved ones. Ghobadi addresses this by presenting the viewer with images of wrecks, bombs, tanks left in the middle of the desert, barbed wire, children who are no longer afraid of fire and deafening sounds of missiles, because this is normal, like playing on an abandoned military truck.

The most significant and successful aspect of the documentary is when the dvcam is able to grasp the upset gaze of a child of about 5 years, in which we see all that has passed and that passes. It gives a lesson in life for all of us who watch this documentary at the film festival, sitting comfortably on our red velvet armchairs.

We will also feel the emotion of anger that emerges from the heartrending voices of mothers who have seen their children pulverized after an exploding bomb. The question is asked: “What would you do to Saddam Hussein if you had the chance?” All respond the same way: “I would hang him up to a tree and every day cut a piece of his meat.”

A report still at the stage of “notes of a journey” could, however, be considered a source for a great deal of political value. Perhaps the narrating voice could be replaced with the director’s, which would make this very personal documentary even more so.

Code: WR0001