WAR IS OVER! (JANG TAMAM SHOD!)
Iran 2003 – Director: Bahman Gohbadi – Original language: Kurdish – Subtitles: English – Length: 51 min.
Immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the prize-winning director of A Time for Drunken Horses travelled to Iraq to present his latest feature, the anti Saddam film Marooned in Irak, made under the most difficult of circumstances during the terror regime. The first ever Iranian director of Kurdish origin, Bahman Ghobadi is eager to bring cinema back to a state where it has been banned for decades. In Baghdad, however, he discovers that the situation after the end of the dictatorship is still difficult: not many Iraqis come to the watch the film; they are afraid of terrorist attacks.
Ghobadi is not allowed to film the occupied city's actual conditions, so he travels to the Kurdish region in the North to witness the consequences of the war on the population. He encounters innocent victims of Saddam's regime who tell him their stories. War is over is a film diary about the difficult reality of post-war Iraq reflected in a combination of realistic and surreal images. It is also a prelude to Ghobadi's award-winning feature film Turtles Can Fly. In Iraq the era of cinema has just started.
"War is Over is a timely and eye-opening film." (53rd Melbourne International Film Festival)
