Homeland: Iraq Year Zero

It's hard to imagine that it would be possible to live a normal life in a country ruled by a bloodthirsty dictator and torn apart by one war after another. Yet under Saddam Hussein, there were people who led lives in Baghdad that were comparable to those of the middle class in the West. Filmmaker Abbas Fahdal, who lives in France, visited his family just before the outbreak of the Iraq War in 2003, and for a year-and-a-half, he filmed daily lives that are surprisingly familiar—a summer outing on the river, cartoons on TV, bickering, birthday celebrations. Of course there are also conversations about the impending invasion, and although the war and occupation dominate the atmosphere, this "history in the making" forms only the background to the family chronicle. It's an inversion of the usual news format as it doesn't zoom in one-sidedly on outbursts of violence. The form of Homeland: Iraq Year Zero also runs counter to the news norm: not short and concise, but lengthy and digressive. Nevertheless, the film remains fascinating throughout its nearly six-hour running time, revealing an Iraq that we've never seen before.