Hamoudi is a football-crazy eleven-year-old who lives in Baghdad and idolises Lionel Messi. Even after he loses a leg in a terrorist attack, Hamoudi fights for his dream. Meanwhile his parents struggle to secure the family’s future and his father, racked with guilt, does everything he can to give his son a chance to play again.

Baghdad.Messi.2023.SUBBED.1080p.WEB.H264-CBFM.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 20 min
Size: 	2.40 GiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	3 833 kb/s
BPP: 	0.074
Audio
#1:  	Arabic 5.1ch AAC LC @ 445 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/8D06DE8F57B701B/Baghdad.Messi.2023.SUBBED.1080p.WEB.H264-CBFM.mkv

Language(s):Arabic, Kurdish
Subtitles:English (Hardcoded)

The post Sahim Omar Kalifa – Baghdad Messi (2023) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

I Want to Live is a documentary on the lives of Kurdish Refugees from Syria, living in refugee camps in Kurdistan. Shot on location, it is set against the Syrian civil war and the ISIS (Islamic State) attacks upon Kurdistan. Told through the eyes of a young boy, Shndar, living with Thalassemia disease, he searches for an immediate treatment as he ages without losing hope, leaving his home amid simmering ethnic and religious hatred to live the life of a refugee. The film tells stories of daily life on the camp and outside of it. More than being a film on the life of refugees, it is an intimate character study and gripping tale of innocent lost amides wars, a meditation on life, death, war, peace, and tolerance.

674MB | 1h 48m | 1280×720 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/2D55B32354BBE1F/I_Want_to_Live_(2015).mkv

Language:Kurdish,Arabic,English
Subtitles:English (hardcoded)

The post Karzan Kardozi – I Want to Live (2015) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

When we think of Iraq, we picture a war torn country which had seen the worst of a dictatorship under Saddam Hussein, where it spent many years in conflict with Iran, before the UN moved in during Desert Storm to liberate occupied Kuwait, followed by the US led invasion in Desert Storm II. Western media continue to pepper us with news that internal strife continues to this very day with news of suicide and miscellaneous bombings, and I’m sure we’re more than curious to want to know about tales from within, rather than agencies from the outside that continue to paint it like a war zone. This is as close as you can go on a road trip from Northern Iraq to Baghdad, onward to Nasiriyah then Babylon.

Son of Babylon deals with the missing generation, and a mother/grandson’s search for their son/father, who was taken by force years ago during the Gulf War, and hasn’t been heard since. Set three weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the film opens with the young boy Ahmed (brilliantly portrayed by a flute holding Yasser Taleeb) and his grandmother Um-Ibrahim (Shehzad Hussein) beginning their long quest for answers and closure, and it is through their eyes and witnessing their experiences, do we get a glimpse of just how emotionally daunting and physically challenging this quest is, amidst a stunning on location backdrop of an Iraq we never get to see, until now.

Written, directed and lensed by Mohamed Al-Daradji, his story touches on the experiences of three generations of Iraqis, as Ahmed and Um-Ibrahim come into contact with Musa (Bashir al-Majid), an ex-Republican Guard about the same age as what their son/father would be if found, and how his life got filled by the war time atrocities that he had to commit under orders. The narrative puts our trio on a never-ending search as they get bounced and referred to another city where other mass graves have been found, suggesting an inexplicable nationwide genocide that had taken place which accounted for the thousands of people who have disappeared.

The story will also open eyes to how diverse Iraq is, with language and cultural barriers from within the population as they struggle to communicate with one another (usually dismissed fairly quickly when one speaks a different language), only to share common ground in their history of grief brought about through the ravages of war. It’s not all doom and gloom all the time as the film does contain some light hearted moments courtesy of Ahmed, and his significance cannot be ignored in a film that closes with a bittersweet end to suffering, and the hope placed on today’s youth who have to forge their own way ahead on a long, dusty road of uncertainty. Ahmed demonstrates his street-smartness, haggling abilities and knowledge of his rights, that I think he epitomizes the spirit of the new generation who are competent in holding their own ground.

Travelling the world’s various festivals, picking up a multitude of awards and being Iraq’s official entry to the Academy Awards next year, this is not an easy film to sit through as it does get a little bit exasperating with the outward show of gloom that will sap your emotional energies, but to the patient viewer it rewards with its beautiful sweeping visuals of a land that most have not had a chance to see, and a poignant story on forgiveness, reconciliation and internal healing that must begin for a nation emerging from its ruins. Recommended! (A NUTSHELL REVIEW)

2.48GB | 1h 31mn | 1024×436 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/96E05F65BC38E7B/Son_of_Babylon_(2009)_–_Mohamed_Al_Daradji.mkv

Language(s):Arabic,Kurdish
Subtitles:English,Chinese (muxed)

The post Mohamed Al Daradji – Syn Babilonu AKA Son of Babylon (2009) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
What would you do if the world’s most fearsome military presence threatened to invade where you live? How does one even begin to prepare for that kind of assault? In “Homeland (Iraq Year Zero),” Baghdad-situated filmmaker Abbas Fahdel offers world audiences an extraordinary opportunity to identify with the “enemy” in the Iraq War — conveniently faceless in most Western coverage, but humanized here by members of Fahdel’s own family. Clocking in at nearly six hours and presented in what may feel like raw homevideo form, this transformative verite glimpse into the lives of everyday Iraqis demands both patience and empathy to sit through, but the reward is worth every second, as an extremely limited number of courageous programmers and curious audiences can attest.

Stylistically speaking, Fahdel’s approach flies in the face of what we’ve come to think of as “war movies,” whether scripted or otherwise. Nothing here seems polished, manufactured or even remotely sensationalized. Recorded over the course of 17 months, beginning in Feb. 2002, the film opens with a shot of a cat, for crying out loud, and features scenes of its subjects singing, shopping and watching cartoons, as well as celebrating family weddings and religious feasts. The idea here is to immerse audiences in a world that, while superficially different from their own, resonates as familiar on the most fundamental levels — namely, that desire to be left alone and allowed to survive.

In this respect, Fahdel (who visited his relatives, but assembled the film in France, where he has spent the majority of his life) makes the curious, yet undeniably haunting choice of informing us via sober onscreen text which of his family members will die before the film ends — not so much a spoiler as a bit of foreboding that underscores the senselessness of their fates, while excusing the fact that it was never his intention to make a snuff film. Their deaths will remain undepicted. Thus, it is perhaps an hour into the film when we learn that Fahdel’s 12-year-old nephew Haidar will be killed after the U.S. invasion.

While the film’s attention has a tendency to drift at times, Haidar serves as a sort of mascot throughout, kidding around with his relatives, explaining basic principles for the camera’s benefit and trying his best to experience a normal childhood under these exceptional circumstances. Given what we already know of his fate, Haidar becomes a kind of walking ghost, helplessly naive about the actual dangers of the imminent American attack. As far as he and the family are concerned, they have been through this before: In one scene, Haidar and his cousins joke about how a diaper can serve as a gas mask, while in another, he re-applies tape to keep the living-room windows from shattering, covering traces that remain from the last war.

Divided into two parts, subtitled “Before the Fall” and “After the Battle,” the film concludes its largely 2002-set first half with a visit by Haidar to the Al-Amiriyah shelter, now a memorial to the 400 civilians killed when Americans bombed the facility in 1991. To quote one of President George W. Bush’s family members (who clearly fared better than Fahdel’s), “Stuff happens,” though “Homeland” goes a long way to recover the sense of human tragedy in what others may view as cold inevitability. In the meantime, it’s thoroughly unnerving to see Bush (and by extension ourselves) referred to in the way many of us saw Saddam Hussein depicted at the time. Here, Hussein is celebrated as Iraq’s “beloved master” by local TV, who present the U.S. as a bully nation that crossed an ocean to start a fight — though no one seems to miss him terribly once he’s gone.

The longer and less immediately engaging second half picks up three weeks after the 2003 invasion and finds both Fahdel’s family and the nation completely transformed by the experience. It’s now commonplace to see American armored vehicles in the streets, where those who might not be so candid with a foreign crew reveal how beefs with Hussein’s corrupt system have now shifted to complaints about the ineffectual new system in place. It almost goes without saying that people would be unhappy with the war, and the inconveniences captured feel relatively minor compared to those which have been thoroughly reported via more professional journalists.

Clearly determined to film everything he can from ground level, Fahdel tours the city to find many prominent buildings reduced to rubble, including both the country’s leading radio station and the Baghdad Cinema Studios’ film archive. The helmer spends much of his time in the car, guided by relatives who supply much-needed context for what we’re seeing. This unofficial driving tour has become almost hypnotic by the point the film ends — with the sort of chilling impact to which faux docs such as “Blair Witch Project” and “Cloverfield” (where the cameraman doesn’t necessarily survive the experience) have perhaps desensitized us. Here, there’s no thrill to the horror, just the heavy weight of having witnessed the true toll of xenophobia, coupled with the gift of being offered the one thing that could prevent its ever happening again: empathy.

https://nitro.download/view/CC83457AA082750/Abbas_Fahdel_-_(2015)_Homeland_(Iraq_Year_Zero)_1.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/96B48AF1F3E4659/Abbas_Fahdel_-_(2015)_Homeland_(Iraq_Year_Zero)_2.mkv
http://nitroflare.com/view/78A98D34503318B/Abbas_Fahdel_-_%282015%29_Homeland_%28Iraq_Year_Zero%29.7z

https://rapidgator.net/file/3fd95711e0f7ad7c05582f4cc19c8922/Abbas_Fahdel_-_(2015)_Homeland_(Iraq_Year_Zero)_1.mkv
https://rapidgator.net/file/09db8caec654eb4003730d0ab2f47243/Abbas_Fahdel_-_(2015)_Homeland_(Iraq_Year_Zero)_2.mkv
https://rapidgator.net/file/b0bb6b7dcf901714fb793ae1d15d6b83/Abbas_Fahdel_-_(2015)_Homeland_(Iraq_Year_Zero).7z

english srt:
https://www.opensubtitles.org/en/subtitles/6862017/homeland-iraq-year-zero-en

Language(s):Arabic
Subtitles:English,French

The post Abbas Fahdel – Homeland (Iraq Year Zero) (2015) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Kurdish childhood friends Hussein and Alan would like to direct and produce a film in their homeland of Iraqi Kurdistan about the genocide of Kurdish people in Iraq, the Anfal military operation in 1988, that led to the murder of more than 182,000 Kurds. They learn that, to achieve veracity by the means of cinema and to face their own identity, it’s worth putting everything on the line – even their own life. The viewer follows the entire crew’s efforts to achieve the goal of making the film despite the numerous problems that accompany the shoot. They are forced to struggle with inadequate financing, the mistrust of the local inhabitants, the exaggerated and inappropriate demands of a nationally-adored movie star, and to fight the disapproval of Sinur’s father, even though the young woman would love to take on the starring role…

http://nitroflare.com/view/7B6CFBB8AD64B2E/Shawkat_Amin_Korki_-_%282014%29_Memories_on_Stone.mkv

Language(s):Kurdish
Subtitles:English

The post Shawkat Amin Korki – Bîranînen li ser kevirî AKA Memories on Stone (2014) first appeared on Cinema of the World.