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Back to list Our River...Our Sky (aka Another Day in Baghdad)

Director’s Profile

Maysoon Pachachi is a London-based filmmaker of Iraqi origin. She studied Philosophy at University College London and Filmmaking at the London Film School under tutors such as Mike Leigh. She worked for many years as a film editor of TV drama and feature films in the UK before focusing her work as a director of documentary films. She directed Iraqi Women – Voices from Exile (1994) for Channel 4 (UK). Her film Iranian Journey (2000) - about the only female bus driver in the Islamic world - was broadcast on ZDF/ARTE. Return to the Land of Wonders (2004) documented her return to post-invasion Iraq and was also broadcast on ZDF/ARTE. In 2004, she co-founded Independent Film & Television College, a tuition free film school in Baghdad. Over the course of ten years IFTVC students produced 18 short documentary films, which were screened internationally and received 14 festival prizes.

Synopsis

Baghdad. The last week of 2006. In a mixed neighborhood, people are trying to live their everyday lives in spite of increasing sectarian violence. All over the city, people of different religions are being forced out of their homes and neighborhoods are being divided by concrete walls. At night, under curfew, the residents remain trapped inside their houses…

SARA (40) sits at her computer, searching the internet for the latest terrorist activity while her daughter tries to sleep against a background of mortars and gunfire. At least if she keeps track of the attacks she can try to predict where the next one may happen…

Sara and Reema’s story intersects with those of their neighbors: KAMAL, a former prisoner-of-war in Iran; DIJLA, Sara’s manic-depressive friend; HAIDER, a teenager being drawn into a sectarian gang and the pretty college student TAMARA, who distract herself from the unbearable reality by listening to music and making fashion clothes.

When Sara’s closest friend and neighbor, SABIHA, a former actress and a Christian, is forced into exile by a sectarian gang, Sara begins to fight back and recover her sense of defiance.

Just before the New Year, as all awake to the news that Saddam Hussein has been executed, they are left in a state of heightened uncertainty. A car-bomb goes off... and then another. And yet, like a miracle, each sustains a fragile hope.

Achievements

2021 Sarajevo Film Festival
2021 San Francisco Arab Film Festival
2021 Cairo International Film Festival
2022 Slemani International Film Festival
2022 International Film Festival Kerala
2022 Alfilm Arab Film Festival Berlin
2022 Cinemas au Sud
2022 Malmo Arab Film Festival

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