Directing
On Hospitality is a necromantic documentary in which Iraqi artist Layla Al-Attar returns from the dead to tell the story of how a Swedish company built a luxurious hotel in Baghdad, commissioned by Saddam Hussein for the 1983 summit of the Non-Aligned Movement. The war changed all plans. Layla Al-Attar created a mosaic with the likeness of George Bush for the entrance to the hotel, and her house was hit by an American missile.
In the 1950s and 1960s The African and Asian leaders from the Non Alignment Movement arrived to the Yugoslavian island Brioni with their cages in varying sizes and thus revived an almost 2500 years old tradition. Already in the Achaemenid Empire delegates from the remote provinces came with animal gifts to Darius the Great in Persepolis. The animals would portray the power and the extent of the empire. Brioni became a microcosm that represented an imagined widespread community.
