Iraqi Cinema finds New Direction

Also at the gathering, the center's managers broke red pens, a symbolic reference to the pens of officials who obstructed a proposal for the Ministry of Culture to fund films for the center to produce. Mohanad Hayal, director and media center manager who oversees young filmmakers in training, said, “Breaking a pen is part of fighting the corruption prevailing in the country in general, and in the cinema sector in particular.”

He told Al-Monitor, “The center has produced films that received 100 Arab and international awards. It is high time we celebrated these achievements.”

The Independent Film Center has produced some 20 films since its establishment, including features, documentaries and shorts. Despite all the efforts of youth in cinema production in a country crawling with security tensions, not to mention political conflict, movie theaters in Iraq remain a mess. Not one has been renovated because of the government’s lack of interest in cultural infrastructure.

Hayal lamented, “Our center has communicated with the government through the Ministry of Culture and the parliament to renovate and build movie theaters, but our proposals went unheard. After the negligence we were shown, the center resorted to mobile cinema, which is a high-resolution big screen that shows films in the open air.”

In an interview with Al-Monitor, Wareth Kwaish, an ambitious young man who produced his first film, “Once, They Were Here,” said, “The center gives us the space to learn a lot through allowing us to brainstorm ideas and develop them.” Kwaish added, “The Iraqi Independent Film Center develops our tools and brings us closer to the techniques of making movies.”