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My Lost Country
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My Lost Country
IDFA 2022

My Lost Country

Baladi aldaia
Ishtar Yasin Gutiérrez
Costa Rica, Iraq, Chile, Egypt
2022
94 min
World Premiere
Festival history

Iraqi theater director Mohsen Sadoon Yasin has spent much of his life in involuntary exile. His daughter, Ishtar Yasin Gutiérrez, has constructed a loving film portrait of her father, and an elegy for a homeland to which they can never return—partly because it has changed so much, and partly because it was perhaps always more a concept than a reality.

The filmmaker tracks her father’s global travels using family photographs, theatre posters and newspaper clippings, as well as sound recordings and extracts from letters they sent to one another, with stamps from Costa Rica, Chile and Denmark. And she films her father in the here and now, capturing his face, his hand, his stories.

There is little structure, at least not in the chronological sense. The film is a patchwork of imaginings, textures and references— references to theater, rituals and Sumerian cosmology. There is also the constant presence of Iraq, the inaccessible core that Mohsen Sadoon Yasin carries within him, along with the folk songs still echoing in his mind.

Credits
Director
Co-production
    Hala Lotfy for Hassala Films,
    Omeed Khalid for Iraqi Films,
    Rod Sáez for Cintámani Films,
    Soledad Cáceres for Cintámani Films,
    Red Sea Film Festival Foundation
    Hala Lotfy for Hassala Films,
    Omeed Khalid for Iraqi Films,
    Rod Sáez for Cintámani Films,
    Soledad Cáceres for Cintámani Films,
    Red Sea Film Festival Foundation
Executive producer
Cinematography
Music
    Khalid Rawi,
    Mustafá Basil,
    Diego Diaz,
    Héctor Aguilar,
    Rafael Cheuquelaf,
    Johann Sebastian Bach
    Khalid Rawi,
    Mustafá Basil,
    Diego Diaz,
    Héctor Aguilar,
    Rafael Cheuquelaf,
    Johann Sebastian Bach
Screening copy
    Astarté Films
    Astarté Films

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