James
Longley’s feature Iraq in Fragments - currently screening at the ICA - has been nominated in the Best
Documentary category at this year’s Academy Awards.
The film is
one of five titles nominated for the Best Documentary award. Other nominated
films in the category include: Deliver Us From Evil; An Inconvenient
Truth; Jesus Camp; and, My Country, My Country.
Iraq in Fragments is a trilogy of portraits of the war-torn country. A
fatherless 11-year-old is apprenticed to the domineering owner of a Baghdad
garage; followers of Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr in two Shiite cities rally
for regional elections while enforcing Islamic law at the point of a gun; a
family of Kurdish farmers welcomes the US presence, which has allowed them a
measure of freedom previously denied.
American director James
Longley spent over 2 years filming in Iraq and this stunningly photographed film presents the
country through the eyes of those who live there - the Sunnis, Shiites and
Kurds.
Iraq in Fragments has been described by previous Best Documentary
recipient Michael Moore as “a stunningly beautiful film ... What this movie
shows, you will never see on the evening news."
Winner of Best Director, Best Cinematography and Best
Editing awards in the 2006 Sundance Film Festival documentary competition, the
film was also awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the 2006 Full Frame Documentary
Film Festival. Most recently the film has won the Distinguished Feature
Documentary Award at the International Documentary Association (IDA) awards and
was named as one the Top 5 Documentaries of the Year at the National Board of
Review awards.
The 79th Academy Awards will be held at
the Kodak Theatre, Los
Angeles, on Sunday 25th
February 2006. Iraq
in Fragments was released by ICA films last Friday, 19th January and will
play at the ICA until 18th February.
Click here for more information.
To contact the author:
suchandrika@gmail.com
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A shame that the other major Iraq film, Ahlaam - which was Iraq's entry into the awards and the first film out of the country since before the first Gulf War in 1991 - didn't get a foreign language nomination.
Perhaps if any of the UK screen agencies had helped Leeds-based producers Human Film to mount some kind of Oscar campaign - or even just pay for flights to LA - they would be celebrating a nomination too.