Hiba Bassem

Director Hiba Bassem returns to Baghdad from Kirkuk in 2005 to finish her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts. This video diary chronicles her first year in Baghdad as she searches for a place to live, looks for work, attends college, deals with family problems and struggles to come to terms with her position as a woman living on her own. Baghdad Days won a New Horizon Silver Award at the Al Jazeera International Film Festival and a Golden Award at the Rotterdam Arab Film Festival in 2006.

Living in a house with her sisters, mother and brother without electricity and surrounded by constant danger, director Hiba Bassem ruminates about what the past three years have brought to those who are living in Iraq.