Iraq International Awards (2023)

Fahrenheit 9/11

Michael Moore's view on how the Bush administration allegedly used the tragic events on 9/11 to push forward its agenda for unjust wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Turtles Can Fly

Turtles Can Fly tells the story of a group of young children near the Turkey-Iraq border. They clean up mines and wait for the Saddam regime to fall.

Badland

Jerry (Jamie Draven) was an idealist when he served in the first Gulf War. But when he was later deployed to Iraq, Jerry was an older man, a father of three and embittered by broken promises and unfulfilled desires. When Jerry returns from Iraq he has been transformed by horrors that cannot be forgiven. He lives a life of poverty, his children afraid of him and his wife, Nora (Vinessa Shaw), unsympathetic and unhappy. When Jerry discovers that Nora has betrayed him, his anger and despair drive him to commit an act so heinous and irreversible that nothing he had experienced in combat could have prepared him for.

The Wall

An American sniper and his spotter engage in a deadly cat-and-mouse game with an Iraqi sniper.

Standard Operating Procedure

Errol Morris examines the incidents of abuse and torture of suspected terrorists at the hands of U.S. forces at the Abu Ghraib prison.

The Tiger and the Snow

Love and injury in time of war. Attilio de Giovanni teaches poetry in Italy. He has a romantic soul, and women love him. But he is in love with Vittoria, and the love is unrequited. Every night he dreams of marrying her, in his boxer shorts and t-shirt, as Tom Waits sings. Vittoria travels to Iraq with her friend, Fuad, a poet; they are there with the second Gulf War breaks out. Vittoria is injured. Attilio must get to her side, and then, as war rages around him, he must find her the medical care she needs. In war, does love conquer all?

In the Valley of Elah

A career officer and his wife work with a police detective to uncover the truth behind their son's disappearance following his return from a tour of duty in Iraq.

A Piece of Land

Ahmed flees his war-torn homeland of Syria and faces discrimination in Iraq. The people of the new society he joins make it impossible for him to move on and begin a new life.

Three Kings

A group of American soldiers stationed in Iraq at the end of the Gulf War find a map they believe will take them to a huge cache of stolen Kuwaiti gold hidden near their base, and they embark on a secret mission that's destined to change everything.

Control Room

A chronicle which provides a rare window into the international perception of the Iraq War, courtesy of Al Jazeera, the Arab world's most popular news outlet. Roundly criticized by Cabinet members and Pentagon officials for reporting with a pro-Iraqi bias, and strongly condemned for frequently airing civilian causalities as well as footage of American POWs, the station has revealed (and continues to show the world) everything about the Iraq War that the Bush administration did not want it to see.

Redacted

A fictional documentary discusses the effects the Iraq war has had on soldiers and local people through interviews with members of an American military unit, the media, and local Iraqis.

The Mark of Cain

After a bomb kills their company commander in Iraq, British soldiers Treacle and Shane are ordered to round up suspects and use torture on the detainees. Back home, the press gets the story and the pair achieves instant infamy.

No End in Sight

Chronological look at the fiasco in Iraq, especially decisions made in the spring of 2003 - and the backgrounds of those making decisions - immediately following the overthrow of Saddam: no occupation plan, an inadequate team to run the country, insufficient troops to keep order, and three edicts from the White House announced by Bremmer when he took over.

The Hurt Locker

During the Iraq War, a Sergeant recently assigned to an army bomb squad is put at odds with his squad mates due to his maverick way of handling his work.

Accidental Anarchist

Carne Ross was a government highflyer. A career diplomat who believed Western Democracy could save us all. But working inside the system he came to see its failures, deceits and ulterior motives. He felt at first hand the corruption of power. After the Iraq war Carne became disillusioned, quit his job and started searching for answers.

Taking Chance

Lt. Col. Michael Strobl, a volunteer military escort accompanies the body of Lance Cpl. Chance Phelps to his hometown in Wyoming.

Route Irish

A private security contractor in Iraq rejects the official explanation of his friend's death and decides to investigate.

Where is Gilgamesh?

A priceless tablet of Gilgamesh, the oldest and most important work of literature is stolen from a museum. A security guard vows to do whatever it takes to get it back from a group of smugglers. Along the way, he faces his own inner demons.

The Card Counter

William Tell just wants to play cards. His spartan existence on the casino trail is shattered when he is approached by Cirk, a vulnerable and angry young man seeking help to execute his plan for revenge on a military colonel. Tell sees a chance at redemption through his relationship with Cirk. But keeping Cirk on the straight-and-narrow proves impossible, dragging Tell back into the darkness of his past.

Saving Private Pérez

La vida ha llevado a Julián Pérez por caminos equivocados, pero el destino le presentará a este hombre la oportunidad de encontrar su redención cuando es enviado a la misión más peligrosa y noble de toda su vida, una misión ordenada por la única autoridad que todavía respeta, su madre, Doña Elvira. Julián debe viajar hasta el otro extremo del mundo, a un lugar llamado Irak, a traer de vuelta vivo, a su hermano menor el soldado de infantería Juan Pérez. Con la promesa hecha, Julián Pérez regresa a su natal Sinaloa donde reclutará a un comando de elite, destinado a cumplir una misión suicida: viajar a Irak y salvar al soldado Pérez.

Fear and Survival: Being LGBTQ in Iraq

For Iraq's LGBTQ community, life is dangerous. Anna Foster meets three young LGBTQ people and hears about the abuses they've experienced and their hopes for the future.

Hanging Gardens

When As’ad, a 12-year-old rubbish picker, adopts an American sex doll from the Baghdad dumps, he crosses into a perilous red zone, finding himself caught in the crossfire between abusive forces of commercialism and fundamentalism in a world where defenders of humanism have lost their power. He embraces the courage it takes to not just survive, but live.

Beyond the Beach: The Hell and the Hope

A powerful depiction of war in infamous global conflict zones. Directed by Oscar/Emmy documentary makers Buddy Squires and Graeme Scott (know for Sam Smith), this film provides a rare and powerful insight into humanity and hope in the depth of war and the greatest global humanitarian crisis of the last several decades.

Doomsday Gun

Dr Gerald Bull was a genius at designing and building superguns (very large long range guns capable of shooting at ranges more than 100 miles). When an operational plan by the CIA to export sanctioned arms to apartheid-South Africa through him was exposed, the CIA denied all knowledge and he went to jail. He was later released, and moved to Belgium to start a subsidiary, of which a major project was to help Saddam Hussein build a new supergun capable of firing over 500 miles.

Fair Game

A devoted wife and mother leads a secret life as a CIA agent until her husband’s article exposes a scandal, putting her identity and loved ones at risk. As her world crumbles, she must navigate the fallout of her double life.

Son of Babylon

A willful young boy follows his just and obstinate grandmother on a journey across Iraq, determined to discover the fate of her missing son, Ahmed's father, who never returned from war.

Amira & Sam

Sam, a soldier who had served in Afghanistan and Iraq, meets Amira when he visits her uncle, Bassam, who had served as Sam's Iraqi translator. Bassam and Sam have a special bond due to their time together in the war. Initially Amira does not trust him because he was an American soldier and her brother was killed by a bomb from American troops in the war. Sam's cousin, Charlie, asks Sam to help him with illegal hedge funds unbeknownst to Sam at the time. Amira is staying with her uncle Bassam since her father died. She sells bootlegged films on the street corner but is forced to stay with Sam after getting busted; immigration officials begin pursuing her. As the film progresses, Sam and Amira fall in love.

Stacey on the Front Line: Girls, Guns and Isis

September 2016: Stacey Dooley embeds herself on the frontline with the extraordinary all-female Yazidi battalion, who are fuelled to take revenge against the so-called Islamic State. As the battle to take Mosul from ISIS advances in Northern Iraq, in this extraordinary film for BBC Three, Stacey finds these young women's lives have been transformed by a desire to avenge their loved ones who were murdered by Isis.

Taah Makhroush

The play deals with the post-liberation stage of Kuwait from the Iraqi invasion, highlighting the political, economic and social issues and problems that came after liberation in a satirical comedy mold.

Sisters Apart

Rojda, a native of Iraqi Kurdistan and a soldier in the German army, travels to a refugee camp in Greece where she manages to meet her mother, who has bad news about her sister Dilan.

Curveball

Although he already has searched Iraq unsuccessfully for weapons of mass destruction as a member of a UN mission, German bio-weapons expert Arndt Wolf is still obsessed with the idea that Saddam Hussein is hiding something. Nobody around him is interested in this topic any more. This changes abruptly when an Iraqi asylum seeker claims to have been involved in the manufacture of chemical weapons. The German Federal Intelligence Service summons Dr. Wolf to ascertain the legitimacy of the claims made by the informant, who has been given the code name “Curveball”.

You are Not a Soldier

As filmmaker Maria Carolina Telles comes to terms with the death of her father, a man who regretted never making it to the frontlines of World War II, she focuses her lens on the life of another man who had his own unique experience as a civilian in the midst of combat: award-winning war photographer André Liohn.

The Deminer

In the chaotic aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein, Fakhir, a father of eight, is serving in the Iraqi army. All around him, he sees innocent civilians getting injured by landmines, so he determines to disarm them with his own hands, using just a pocketknife and some wire cutters. He clears thousands of roadside bombs, mines and car bombs, knowing that every time he cuts a wire it could cost him his life—which he seems to find less important than the lives of others. In 2014, by this time having lost a leg, he starts working for the Kurdish Peshmerga, disarming boobytraps left behind by Daesh in and around Mosul. An enthusiastic home video maker, Fakhir collects hundreds of hours of footage of his day-to-day work.

100 Miles to Redemption

A poignant story about overcoming our demons and finding hope through darkness. Haunted by the affects of PTSD induced by fighting a war, the physical injuries that led to copious amounts of opiates, the emotional strain of his squad leader committing suicide, losing his best friend from overdosing on heroin, all combined with his drug addiction ultimately left Shawn losing all hope in life.

Ashes

Christian, a young man from the city, travels to a town in Zaragoza, Spain of his recently-deceased father to throw his ashes and give a final farewell. He arrives to find the town abandoned years ago by everyone, leaving their houses to slowly crumble into memory, in search of better opportunities. Yet, one resident remains. An eccentric and wild man who has chosen to live alone in nature, to protect the remains of the village from the pillagers that often drive by in search of valuable artefacts. Their encounter will force Christian to confront his father's identity and perhaps finally understand why his father was the way he was.

Stronger Than a Bullet

Iran, January 16th, 1979. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi flees after being overthrown. Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Tehran and proclaims the Islamic Republic on April 1st, 1979. In the same year, Saddam Hussein seizes power in Iraq and, after several border skirmishes, attacks Iran on September 22nd, 1980, initiating a cruel war that will last eight years. Since its outbreak, correspondent Saeid Sadeghi documented it from its beginning to its bitter end.

Sculpture

Video art of sculpture is the real life story of Rumi (Mevlana) and Shams Tabrizi. Rumi and Shams are well known international poets of Persian language. One day, Rumi invites Shams Tabrizi to his house, Shams throws the book into the pool of water and Rumi is worried and Shams returns the book to Rumi without any trace of water. The lost half of the sculpture in the film is a representation of the same concept, in which the dance of Sama, the sculptor's mind and the role of the face are visible. "Sculpture" has won more than 57 International Awards, third place (semi-final) in called Flickers' Rhode Island International Film Festival (Academy Award ® Qualifying, BAFTA Qualifying, Canadian Screen Award Qualifying) , Crown Point International Film Festival(Chicago) ,Vegas Movie Awards,Global Shorts( Los Angeles),(US),Gold Star Movie Awards (US),One-Reeler Short Film Competition (US),Accolade Competition (US),Berlin International Art Film Festival and many other events.