wshenley This is a compelling and insightful portrait of Iraq in the moments after Saddam has fallen. I approached this film without knowing much of its historical context but still found it absorbing, but I felt that I ought to know much more to really appreciate it. The technique for characterisation is fantastic, all the more amazing on what was presumably a very small team - if that? - and shoestring budget.The few characters selected to form it drift in and out of view giving the sense that there are many more like them in the crowd but that none will be quite the same...We first approach the scene through the eyes of a child who has at some point lost his father and his sense of melancholy mixed with carefreeness being that young speaks volumes about the minute effects of a catastrophe of this nature and the failure of the American/British 'liberators' to fill the void left by Saddam. Has mood in spades

Tony Camel n fact the most disquieting aspect of the film is that it was shot between 2003 and 2005, meaning that, however bad daily life seemed then, things have grown far worse since the camera was switched off. Director James Longley would no doubt concur but, cleverly, he never makes his own views explicit, preferring to let the images speak for themselves.And speak they do, whether it's the first section of the film in which 11-year-old Sunni boy Mohammed is forced to choose between work and education or, better still, a up-close look at the Shiite political/religious group run by Moqtada al-Sadr.The third strain of the film retreats from the extremes of the first two parts – by way of emphasising that these are ordinary folk unfortunate enough to live in extraordinary times – and focuses on rural Kurdish families and, in particular, fathers and sons.Throughout, it's shot so brilliantly that it feels less like a documentary than a superior drama. Best of all, though, is Longley's compassionate depiction of people to whom, crucially, we can all relate.

janbanke most docu films I see are less than exceptional in terms of cinema style. this is an exception. in Iraq in Fragments you get both the revelation of Iraq's reality from within society and also the eye of a true filmmaker. exceptional, beautiful work of cinema art and a very important documentary film. i think this film will be a landmark work in future years. this film is returning to something like the time when images were more important than text/language. in other words, this is a film that uses CINEMA language to speak with. it is truly unusual this way, not like any documentary in i saw in a long long time. maybe this is a new direction for documentary film. i hope so.

sftiger While the cinematography is stunningly gorgeous, I found "Iraq in Fragments" to be mostly very disappointing, a shallow rehash of stereotypes of the 3 main sections of Iraq.First we get a little boy who's failed the first grade 2 or 3 times and professes to be loved and well-cared for by a boss who is rough and bullying to him, behavior that would be clearly labeled as abusive in the US. Granted in a much harsher, more violent society little Muhammed may be relatively well-off. But this roughness, the constant low-level violence and the threat of much worse, the cycle of failure and nostalgia for Saddam Hussein (Yes, he was terrible, but now is so much worse, they all say.) is simply what we already "know" from western press reports from the Sunni Arabs.The Shi'ite segment shows rough "justice" as suspects in a minor crime are kept imprisoned in blindfolds by what appears to be a vigilante squad. Here we see the prayers, processions, funerals, self-flagellation – oh, those exotically religious Shi'ites! And the Kurds are shown as struggling to develop democracy. The little boy who is the focus has auburn highlights in his hair, showing these Kurds to be more western than the Arabs. Montage shots of boys in a field recall Eisenstein, images of youthful dreams of building a new future.The visual lessons of Eisenstein are much displayed here with wonderful montages, and the composition of this film alone makes it well worth watching. It is one of the most beautifully shot movies I've seen in a long time. Still, the content seems to be so much western hand-wringing over Arab violence, and the eventual dismemberment of the country (implied in the title) and hope for Kurdish democracy. (And here is the simplistic emotional uplift that softens the rest of the film.) The aesthetics of the movie are seductive and one can feel the visual poetry as being somehow more than that. Alas, it isn't. While the close presence and some of the time spent with individuals, particularly the young Sunni Arab and Kurdish boys, provide a sense of personal intimacy, they reveal no depth or complexity to the situations they live in, or any sense either of what holds Iraq together or what's tearing it apart. The framing of these three sections offers a sense of boundary and inevitability, objectifying the subjects, telling us nothing new about them or their situation, and encouraging distance and complacency among western viewers.