Netherlands Production Platform - Nederlands Film Festival

Um-Hussein
(Mother Hussein)
Human Film
UK
Writer/director Mohamed
Al-Daradji
Producer Isabelle Jayne Stead
Producer Dimitri de Clercq
30 • NPP 2008
Synopsis
Southern Iraq, 1991. The American army
suddenly appears, casting a long shadow
over Saddam Hussein’s bloody regime.
Hussein, a Kurdish 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
pulls out a flute and plays the lyrical melody
he’s written for his soon-to-be-born son.
At dawn, an Iraqi military Jeep suddenly
looms up. Hussein approaches and, desperate
to shield his injured buddy, is mistakenly
taken for a rebel. He’s immediately
arrested and carted off to prison…
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, hitching
rides with strangers and crossing paths with
fellow travellers on all too similar missions,
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.
And Ahmed, who so yearns for the father
he’s never met, picks up his flute and plays
Hussein’s once unfinished tune… a tune
that drifts across the vast Iraqi desert.
Director’s statement
Not a single Iraqi family remains untouched
by Saddam Hussein’s horrific killing fields.
To date, more than 300 mass graves have
been excavated in Iraq. The most recent
excavation uncovered a grave of 1,500 Kurdish
people. An estimated one million people
are still missing. Today, thousands of
families continue to search for loved ones
who disappeared under Saddam Hussein’s
bloody, 35-year dictatorship.
Um-Hussein is a deeply personal story,
somewhat inspired by my own aunt, who
also lost a son under Saddam’s regime. The
film spans three generations of one family. It
follows the stories of a Kurdish soldier, and
the elderly mother and son who go off in
search of him. Those characters respectively
represent the past, the present and my
hope for Iraq’s future.
I will use primarily non-professional
actors in Um-Hussein. By casting real people
with a particular affinity to the characters
as written, and by working with them in an
improvisational way, I hope to elicit performances
that draw on their real-life experiences
and instincts.
Although Iraq has been ravaged by war,
it still abounds in many beautiful landscapes,
from the lush mountains of the north to the
marshes, rivers and deserts in the south.
Past and present live side by side, just like
the parallel stories in our film. Old Babylon
and its hanging gardens stand proudly
beside Saddam’s mass graves. American
checkpoints have sprung up next to Republican
prisons and the ancient city of Summer.
More than anything in this note of intention,
I want to emphasise that I am not making
a ‘political film’. I see it more as a
humanist film, telling a human story that all
people can relate to. While the story
inevitably includes many political elements,
they are not at all the thrust of this film. It will
be told from my point of view, from my
awareness, as an Iraqi man recounting the
story of his people to an international audience.
Um-Hussein is a bitter search for
truth. We hope it will inspire hope for Iraq.
Director Mohamed Al-Daradji
Mohamed Al-Daradji was born in Baghdad in
1978. He studied film and theatre at the Art
Institute before fleeing the country when his
cousin, a political activist, was assassinated.