Best Iraqi history movies

In the winter of 1988, in the depths of the Iraq/Iran war, the border town of Halabja was attacked by chemical weapons with all its people and their different stories.

An Iraqi soldier escaping from Kuwait as the army retreats in 1991 is captured and cast into Saddam’s infamous prisons, accused of being a traitor. Outside, an Iraqi uprising instills hope for those held captive in the killing fields of Babylon.

Sulaymaniah, Iraqi Kurdistan, in the 1940s. When his wife Kaleh goes into labor, her husband Jwamer runs to get the midwife. By ill luck, he runs into the middle of a political demonstration and is seriously wounded and arrested by mistake as the ringleader. After a rigged trial, Jwamer is sentenced to ten years in prison. He serves his sentence and, as soon as he is set free, goes in search of his wife and child.

"Jiyan" takes place in Halabja about five years after Saddam's infamous chemical attack in 1988. Diyari (Kurdo Galali) has come from his new homeland, America, to put up a badly needed new orphanage. As construction proceeds, he gradually becomes acquainted with the tragic individual stories of the survivors. Prime among these is orphan girl Jiyan (Pirsheng Berzinji), and her lively young cousin Sherko (Choman Hawrami). Although he seems to fit right into life in this impoverished town, Diyari can hardly absorb the catastrophe that hit there, nor can he accept the level of injury that he encounters. When the orphanage is ready, Diyari says his goodbyes, plunging Jiyan back into quiet despair.

A historical epic about the battle of Qadiseya, which was helmed by the Arabian knight Saad Ibn Abi Waqas, and which enabled Muslims from conquering Persia in 636 A.D.

In 1959, underground revolutionaries try to assassinate Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Kassem in Baghdad. News reports claim they have failed, and at first the revolutionaries lay low, but as the secret police continue to comb the neighborhoods with house-to-house searches, they flee to the countryside. Among those fleeing is Saddam Hussein, the future president of the republic.

Debuting Iraq-born, Netherlands-based writer/director Ibrahim Selman starts out on docu ground, with a voiceover explaining his objectives and the film’s stand-in location, and recalling Kurdistan before the advent of war. He then shifts into narrative mode, with glimpses of life in a mountain village caught in the conflict between Iraqi military authorities and peshmergas (guerrilla freedom fighters).