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Truly Dreadful Film

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

When one thinks of Iraq it is probable that you have an image of it. Lots of guns and lots of militia all around the cities. This movie shows the other side of it. The side after the images we normally think of. To be able to understand everything in this movie, knowledge about Iraq is required. In 2003 after the fall of Saddam Hussain, the country of Iraq was in a bad place. One of the worst things that were discovered after Saddam's fall were, mass graves, where not all the bodies in them could be identified. Those families who had sons or husbands in the military were forced to look for their relatives in this mass graves and most of the times they were not found. This is the setting for the movie Son of Babylon. Ahmed has never meet his father who was drafted to join the military 12 years ago when Ahmed was born. Ahmed and his grandma, Um Ibrahim, decided to go look for Ahmed's father after she gets a letter from a friend of her son. They go out looking for him with nothing, they are not even sure if they will find him, they hope they will. Their journey is a long and tiresome one. They encounter some people along their way that might be able to help Ahmed at the end of the movie, or at least we hope they will. Their journey begins and ends with tragedy and sadness. Ahmed is forced to become independent and is left with nothing at the end, not even hope. The last scene of the movie is heartbreaking as we see Ahmed play the flute of his father while crying. This movie really shows the effect war has on people. They suffer some more than other and they lose sometimes everything they have. Son of Babylon could be called a roadrtrip movie because we follow our characters on a trip that will change their lives forever but this movie is so much more. It opens a window to a world many of don't even imagine. A beautiful, tearful movie that will make you think about the consequences of war and the importance of family.

The first impression was pretty much hopeless. I wondered why they made a movie with such a desperate plot. But recalling each scene in the movie, everyone in the movie was so kind. The movie starts with a scene that an old woman and her grandson walk middle of nowhere in the desert of Iraq. They are Kurdish. They were severely persecuted under Saddam Hussein ruling. Three weeks after the Hussein regime fell, they started the travel from Kurdistan, northern Iraq, to Nasiriya, southern Iraq, where the woman believes her son is confined in the jail. The distance between Kurdistan and Nasiriya is about 700 km according to the Google map. The first truck driver ignored the boy's exclamation to stop, but he was an exception. All other people who encounter the old woman and the boy are very kind, despite many of them can not understand her Kurdish.Through the TV and newspapers, our image of Iraq is chaos and hate. Deadly suicide bombings are daily events. Government is still in turmoil. And the conflicts between Arabians and Kurdish, or Sunni and Shi'ah do not end. In this movie, however, people sympathize, help and forgive each other. What does the title "Son of Babylon" mean? Babylon is the name when the country was in the highest glory. The dream of the woman and her grandson to see the hanging garden of Babylon did not come true. But this movie may be telling us to see the hanging garden covered by green leaves, beyond the desperate reality, by helping each other.

This is the first Iraqi film that I have seen and what a stunningly emotional introduction to the cinema of a country that is presented so differently in Hollywood movies. "Green Zone", "The Hurt Locker", "In The Valley Of Elah", "The Kingdom" ... these are all essentially an American view, the victor's perspective. Here 31 year old writer and director Mohammed Daradh - who studied film making in London - has crafted a totally contrasting work. It looks different: it was actually shot in Iraq and not in Jordan or Spain. It sounds different, deploying a mixture of Kurdish and Arabic. And the subject matter is different: the victims of Saddam Hussein and especially the suffering of the Kurds in the north of the country.The two central performances - an old woman (Shazada Hussein) and a young boy (Yasser Talib), respectively the hopeful mother and the bewildered son of a missing Kurd forced to be a soldier in Saddam's army - are so powerful and poignant and their journey highlights the true victims of the dictatorship, all those who went missing and whose bodies may never be identified. The final location of Babylon reminds us that one time this was one of the richest and most civilised locations on earth.

Son of Babylon marks the first few movie to be made in Iraq by an Iraqi, after the fall of Saddam Hussien's Regine. Director Mohamed Al Daradji, a former soldier under Saddam's Regine, tells the story on the despair of the loss of the loved ones during the Iraq war in the early 1900's, where family members of the victims could only see the remains of the loved ones buried under the bed of sand where they hoped for their loved ones to remain alive.The story begins with a Kurdish grandmother, Um-Ibrahim, and her only grandson, Ahmed, on a journey towards Baghdad to look for her son, Ibrahim (grandson's father), who was forced into the army in 1991 during the outbreak of Iraq war. With a weak body and unable to speak Arabic, Um-Ibrahim wants the willful Ahmed to guide her along the streets of Baghdad, looking into possible places that she can find her son. Throughout the journey, the duo met a driver who drives them to Baghdad from the desert and a former soldier forced into performing a massacre during Saddam's Regine, who helps the duo in locating various mass graves to look for Ibrahim.The story for the road movie is fairly simply, but this may not be an easy movie to understand, especially for audience who have no knowledge on the Iraq war and the massacre during Saddam's Regine. The willful Ahmed looks naive and innocent, without knowing what has happened around him until he has to accompany his grandmother in searching for his father. On the other hand, Um-Ibrahim seems more of a villager who is ignorant on the environment outsider her world. Unable to communicate with the people around her in Arabic, it becomes a barrier towards looking for her son. But she will locate her son no matter how difficult it will be. When both has to work hand in hand together, it breeds frustration: Ahmed is tired of his grandmother reading official letters locating the whereabouts of his father; Um-Ibrahim has to stop her grandson from running away from her without her knowledge.When arriving on one of the destination, Um-Ibrahim helps Ahmed change a set of clothes, so that he will not look dirty should they found Ibrahim. At the same time, Ahmed helps Um-Ibrahim washes her face after traveling on a long journey. Such acts sends a message on the desperation and hope of thousands of Iraqi's looking towards finding their family members. As the story unfolds, we will see on how many of the Iraqi's burst into disappointment as their hope dashes after being taken to various mass graves, where victims who died under Saddam's Regine were buried in the wild.The message Daradji wants to send to the audience across the world is the destruction of the lives and hopes of civilians when war broke out somewhere else, be it an foreign invasion or a civil war. At the same time, it also gives a view on the society in chaos after the war, on how people begin to pick up the pieces from the destruction without any order. Son of Babylon is a story told from the view of the Iraqi's who survived the war, where all the people wished for is for the family and the society to live together harmoniously, not out into a war for the benefit of an individual.While we have plenty of movies featuring American troops controlling and restoring the order of Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussien, we do not have any movie that truly reflects the thought from the view of the Iraqi's. Son of Babylon is the first, and may be the only few movies in the world that could have done so. In short, Son of Babylon marks the first few important movie on the destruction of war in the cinema history.