Darina Al Joundi, Zainab Joda, Amed Hashimi, Meriam Abbas
In Baghdad, winter 2006, three years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, extreme sectarian violence is rife across the country, with nightly curfews amid the ongoing occupation.
Struggling writer and anxious mother Sara (Darina Al Joundi) is at the heart of a small Baghdad community. Unable to write surrounded by the trauma and devastation of war, she frantically monitors the death toll and uses her literacy skills to help her neighbours translate their pleas to the Americans. Her story is interwoven with those of her neighbours, other ordinary Iraqis trying to live their lives. Throughout the chaos and destruction, they never let their hopes for the future fade, but are repeatedly forced to ask themselves a painful question – who does Baghdad really belong to now?
Set between Christmas and Eid al-Adha 2006, documentarian Maysoon Pachachi’s award-winning fiction debut is dedicated to the youth of Iraq and seeks to offer a more realistic portrayal of Iraqi lives amid the war than in previous depictions in Western media. A raw and powerful story, Our River… Our Sky explores cultural identity, nationalism, the effects of conflict, and what it means to belong.
