Son of Babylon

Son of Babylon

Director: Mohammad Al-Daradji

Country: Iraq

Language: Arabic

Southern Iraq, 1991. The American army suddenly appears, casting a long shadow over Saddam Hussein’s bloody regime. HUSSEIN, a Kurd soldier in the Iraqi army, staggers out of a brutal military intervention, his wounded friend’s body slumped over his shoulder. Covered in dirt, sweat and blood, the two men are on their way home. Exhausted, they stop to spend the night beside a campfire in the desert. Hussein plays the melody he’s written for his soon-to-be born son. At dawn, an Iraqi military Jeep suddenly looms up before them. Mistakenly taken for a rebel, Hussein’s arrested and carted off to a Republican prison. As time surpasses, in Northern Iraq, 2003. Two weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein. News spreads that several prisoners of war have been found alive in the south. UM-HUSSEIN, a frail old woman dressed in black, and AHMED, her 12-year-old grandson, trudge along a dusty mountain road. She’s on a mission, determined to find the son who’s never returned from the war… Her only son, Hussein. As these two forgotten souls traipse across the battered landscape, their journey runs parallel to that of Hussein, so many years before. Their stories intertwine… As the captive is shuttled from one prison to the next, steeling himself against the agonies and despair that await him at every turn, his mother gradually comes to witness the true horrors of a senseless war run amok.

Capsuling the essence of the gigantic legend it can be remarked as “A willful young boy follows his just as obstinate grandmother in a journey across Iraq, determined to discover the fate of her missing son, Ahmed's father, who never returned from war.”