REORIENT:

It is perhaps such scenes that remind one that Hadid’s film is not only about the stories of various characters, each on a journey of their own, but also about Iraq. Indeed, the final ‘chapter’ of Hadid’s film is not easy to digest – both visually and emotionally – as it highlights the gruesome consequences of the Iraq war and the miserable fate of the Iraqi people in vivid, brutal colour. While there’s certainly much more Hadid has to say about Iraq and the atrocities that have been, and are continuing to be committed there, she feels that for the purposes of the film, enough has been said and left open for discussion. ‘If I wanted, I could have made a 15-hour documentary about Iraq, but that’s not what I intended to do’, she remarked after the film’s screening at the Toronto International Film Festival in response to a perturbed viewer who complained about there being no mention of American involvement in Iraq in the film. Ultimately, through Zakaria – that wingless angel – Hadid sublimely tells a lush story of hope and hopelessness, scaling down and imparting the horror of modern Iraq on a human level. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise …

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