Abbas Fahdel
Directing
Biography
Abbas Fadhel (Arabic: عباس فاضل) is an Iraqi-French film director, screenwriter and film critic, born in Babylon, Iraq. Most known for his 2015 film Homeland: Iraq Year Zero. Based in France since the age of 18 years, he studied cinema at the Sorbonne University until Ph.D. In January 2002, he returned to Iraq with a French passport and filmed a documentary film, Back to Babylon, in which he asked himself: "What have my childhood friends become? How have their lives changed? What would my life have been like if I hadn't chosen to build my destiny elsewhere?" The country's dramatic situation is the background of this introspective investigation. One year later, in February 2003, when a new war seems imminent, Abbas Fadhel returned to Iraq with the intention of filming his family and friends, and the superstitious hope of protecting them against the dangers threatening them. When the war started, he returned to France and lost all contact with his family. Two months later, he again returned to Iraq and discovered a country shaken by violence, the nightmare of dictatorship replaced by chaos, but a country where, nonetheless, everything remains possible: the best or the worse. This historical moment is the theme of his second documentary film, We Iraqis. In 2008, he directed the feature film Dawn of the World, a war-drama in which he gives an unexpected account of the multiple impacts of the Gulf Wars and how they have dramatically damaged an area known to be the geographic location of the biblical Garden of Eden. In 2015, Fadhel premiered Homeland: Iraq Year Zero, a monumental documentary of 334 minutes tackling life in Iraq before the American Invasion of Iraq and during the subsequent Iraq War.
Known For
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نعيم وحليمة
The Mesopotamian Marshes, at the delta of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, in the south of Iraq. This is where Mastour and Zahra grow up. Shortly after their marriage, Mastour and Zahra are forced to separate when the Gulf War breaks out. On the battlefield, Mastour befriends Riad, a young soldier from Baghdad. Mortally wounded, Mastour makes Riad promise to protect Zahra when the war is over. When Riad arrives in the village, he falls deeply in love with Zahra. But unable to bear the loss of her husband, Zahra shuts herself off. In this completely foreign environment that is hostile to this newcomer, and as a new conflict is on the verge of inflaming the whole area, Riad will do the impossible to find his place.
Dawn of the World
Living in exile in France for the past 25 years, Abbas Fahdel last year made Retour à Babylone, the occasion to return home, be reunited with his childhood friends and explore a reality that was now alien to him. In this film, Fahdel's camera shows us Iraqis in another light and the hopes and fears of these men and women who escaped the nightmare of a dictatorship only to be mired in chaos. He is better equipped than anyone for this task. He is both an "outside" angle of vision and a brotherly view. An Iraqi among Iarqis, he embodies a reference point in the turmoil. His presence and commitment during the past year, his receptivity during those months when everyone was preparing for war explains why his camera is never indiscreet or prying.
We Iraqis
Chronicles of everyday life in Iraq before and after the U.S. invasion.
Homeland: Iraq Year Zero
Back in his home town of Babylon after a long exile, the Iraqi-born director Abbas Fahdel asks himself: "What has become of my friends? What has life here made of them? What would my life have been like if I hadn't chosen to build my destiny elsewhere?"
Back to Babylon
Yara lives alone with her grandmother in an isolated valley, most of whose inhabitants have died or emigrated abroad. One day, Yara meets a young stranger.
Yara
As war engulfs South Lebanon, a family flees their home while bombs reduce their town to ruins. Returning to devastation, they find only fragments of what once was, yet among the wreckage, the community clings to a fragile hope that peace and renewal will come.
Tales of the Wounded Land
From their 'Purple House' in the South of Lebanon, French-Iraqi director Abbas Fahdel and his Lebanese wife, the painter Nour Ballouk, start exploring a multifaceted country that seems to be on the edge of the abyss.
Tales of the Purple House
Among the countless Syrian citizens who have fled their country, about one-and-a-half-million have relocated to neighboring Lebanon. In this patient, heart-rending portrait, Iraqi-born filmmaker Abbas Fahdel, director of the epic Homeland (Iraq Year Zero), settles in with a community of refugees living in a tent camp in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley, most of them children.