Iraq's Invisible Beauty
Original title: Iraq's Invisible Beauty
Year: 2022
Language: Arabic, English
Available subtitles: English, French
Genre: history, art
Country: Belgium, France
Runtime: 90 min, 52 min
Status: Released
Iraq's Invisible Beauty is the unseen portrait of a man and his country that he photographed before it was destroyed, deprived and left for dead. It is also the search for a stolen culture.
Latif Al Ani photographed Iraq for 30 years before multiple wars arose. At the age of 86, he travels through his devastated country in search of the people and places he photographed at the time, sharing his pictures with Iraqis who today cannot imagine that the world in the photographs was real.
Latif al Ani, born in Baghdad in 1932 is known as the 'father of Iraqi photography’. His work forms a unique visual archive of Iraq during its heydays from the 1950s to 1970s and are a profound insight into the country, mostly unknown to Westerners and even Iraqi people themselves.
Director: Sahim Omar Kalifa, Jurgen Buedts
Screenplay: Sahim Omar Kalifa, Jurgen Buedts
Cinematography: Carl Rottiers, Jimmy Kets, Jurgen Buedts
Editing: Jurgen Buedts, Gladys Joujou
Sound: Elias Ludovic
Production: Las Belgas, Faites Un Voeu
Reviews
"beautifully documents an Iraq that no longer exists" The Guardian