Back to Babylon (film)

Back to Babylon
Directed by	Abbas Fahdel
Produced by	Agat Films & Cie France 5
Music by	Sami Kaftan
Cinematography	Abbas Fahdel Amer Alwan
Edited by	Sylvie Gadmer
Distributed by	Doc & Co
Release dates	2002
Running time	52 minutes
Country	France Iraq
Language	Arabic

Back to Babylon (Arabic: العودة إلى بابل‎‎, French: Retour à Babylone) is a documentary film directed by the Iraqi-French film director Abbas Fahdel.

Synopsis

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 life here have made of me had I not decided to follow the course of destiny elsewhere?" In his search and inquiries, his encounters with the friends of his youth, it is the situation today in Iraq that is revealed through the camera's eye: the ravages of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, the after-effects of the Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf War and the embargo imposed by the United Nations.

Quotes

Abbas Fahdel (voice-over): "The past, with its overwhelming splendour and its scents of paradise lost, is too painful for Iraqis to bear. I recall my father reciting the poet Al-Rissafi: "We are not masters of our miserable present / On men of a foregone age / The face of time once smiled / But on seeing us, it darkened."

See also

• Cinema of Iraq
• Iraqi culture

External links

• Back to Babylon at IMDb
• Official website (English)
• Back to Babylon at the International Festival of Audiovisual Programs (English)
• Photos gallery