Baghdad in My Shadow

En identitetspolitisk thriller om livene til et knippe irakere i London.

How to leave a gloomy past and start over again? The story of Baghdad in my Shadow moves between present-day London and a not-too-distant past in Iraq during Saddam Hussein's regime, where betrayal, lies and abuse were parts of daily life. The small café Abu Nawas in London is frequented by a group of exiled Iraqis. Here are poets and communists, but also aspiring Islamists and gay people living more or less openly. What the café guests have in common is a longing to find the balance between who they used to be and who they will become.

One of the dramas unfolding in the café is the relationship between Nasser – a young man with roots in Iraq and an identity crisis in Britain, drawn to increasingly darker and more extremist understandings of Islam – and his uncle, Tawfik. Tawfik wants to guide his nephew onto a different path but struggles to establish a close and honest relationship to him.

We also get to know Amal, a young woman who enters into a relationship with the British engineer Martin. Amal struggles to form a new identity that could encompass both herself and Martin, but her life will be met with more profound challenges. One day, the café gets a new regular: Iraq's cultural attaché to London, coming straight from the airport with a suitcase full of buried secrets.

Gjermund Granlund

Director

Samir er født i Bagdad i 1955, med en sveitsisk mor og en irakisk far. Samirs fulle navn er Samir Jamal al Din. Han jobber som regissør og produsent, og begynte å produsere egne filmer på midten av 1980-tallet. Han er mest kjent for “Baghdad-trilogien” bestående av Baghdad in My Shadow (2019) og dokumentarene Iraqi Odyssey (2014) og Forget Baghdad: Jewish and Arabs - The Iraqi Connection (2002).

This film is part of