Film odyssey uncovers the truth about Iraq’s many ‘disappeared’

Baghdad-born, Al-Daradji trained as a film-maker in the Netherlands and at the National Film School in Leeds, where he established the production company Human Film.

While working with Human Film, established with producer Isabelle Stead, Al-Daradji found himself back in Baghdad in 2003, preparing to make Ahlaam.

The director says: “I was walking along Al-Rashid Street in Baghdad when I heard breaking news from a radio in a nearby shop: mass graves had been discovered near Babylon. I stopped cold at that moment. Since I could remember, fathers and sons of family and friends had disappeared. No family was unaffected and no-one dared to ask why. I thought about my auntie’s son, who had gone missing 15 years earlier. It took me about an hour to gather myself again.”

Although he was in the middle of shooting his first feature film, Al-Daradji knew he had found the subject for his second feature.

Son of Babylon, which was made by Human Film and with the support of Screen Yorkshire and the UK Film Council, has been winning praise and awards around the globe and next week it comes back to Yorkshire for a special screening with the director. The movie takes place two weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Ahmed is a 12-year-old boy who begrudgingly sticks to his grandmother’s side. On hearing the news that prisoners of war have been found alive in the South, she is determined to discover the fate of her missing son, Ahmed’s father, who never returned from the Gulf war.

Al-Daradji says: “Inspired by the relationship I shared with my aunt, the idea came for the film to bind two generations –the older steeped in suffering, the younger bearing hope for the future.

“I prepared the movie for four years, collecting archive footage, writing, crying; it’s not been easy for me to tell this story and it’s become much more than a film or piece of cinema to me and my team.”

While the movie took four years to prepare, the shooting took place over six gruelling months which saw Al-Daradji travel from the north to the south of Iraq, filming through seven major cities.

Al-Daradji says: “Making independent film is always difficult. In Europe or the USA it’s tough, but to do it in Iraq is a nightmare. Even the thought of it is difficult. There is no security, the country is under occupation and there is no proper infrastructure for the film industry. Only three films have been made so far since 2003 and all the equipment and facilities have to be brought in from outside.”

Since the movie was completed, Al-Daradji has been around the world with it, watching it being screened to festvial audiences and critics who have heaped praise on the movie. His favourite screenings, however, have been in Iraq, where people respond emotionally to the story.

He says: “There are no cinemas in Iraq, so last year we establised the Iraqi Mobile Cinema to allow screenings to be held around the country. When I screened Son of Babylon earlier this year I had two people working whose job it was to just hand out tissues.”

Son of Babylon, special screening followed by Q and A with the director, Sheffield Showroom, Feb 15, 6pm. Tickets on 0114 275 7727.