About trauma, resilience and post-traumatic growth in the medics who served with Australia's special forces in Afghanistan. From losing mates in the battlefield to treating horrifically injured Afghan kids in remote surgical theatres.
American soldiers of the 2/3 Field Artillery, a group known as the "Gunners," tell of their experiences in Baghdad during the Iraq War. Holed up in a bombed out pleasure palace built by Sadaam Hussein, the soldiers endured hostile situations some four months after President George W. Bush declared the end of major combat operations in the country.
A powerful and poignant film in which families and friends of those who have died fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq talk openly about their loved ones and their grief. Epic in scale and spanning seven years of war, this landmark three-hour film gives a rare insight into the personal impact and legacy of this loss.
Michael Moore's view on how the Bush administration allegedly used the tragic events on 9/11 to push forward its agenda for unjust wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Morgan Spurlock tours the Middle East to discuss the war on terror with Arabic people.
There were two wars in Iraq--a military assault and a media war. The former was well-covered; the latter was not. Until now... Independent filmmaker, Emmy-award winningTV journalist, author and media critic, Danny Schechter turns the cameras on the role of the media. His new film, WMD, is an outspoken assessment of how Pentagon propaganda and media complicity misled the American people...
BROTHERS AT WAR is an intimate portrait of an American family during a turbulent time. Jake Rademacher sets out to understand the experience, sacrifice, and motivation of his two brothers serving in Iraq. The film follows Jake’s exploits as he risks everything—including his life—to tell his brothers’ story.
An essay film exploring the thirteen United States Presidents that have led the country through war and conflict from 1950 to 2025.
A chronicle which provides a rare window into the international perception of the Iraq War, courtesy of Al Jazeera, the Arab world's most popular news outlet. Roundly criticized by Cabinet members and Pentagon officials for reporting with a pro-Iraqi bias, and strongly condemned for frequently airing civilian causalities as well as footage of American POWs, the station has revealed (and continues to show the world) everything about the Iraq War that the Bush administration did not want it to see.
The award-winning filmmaker Peter Lilienthal is dedicated to this extremely poignant documentary of U.S. military policy and the living conditions of former resistance fighters in Latin America.
An examination of the prisoner abuse scandal involving U.S. soldiers and detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in the fall of 2003.
On Sept. 11, 2001, deep inside a White House bunker, Vice President Dick Cheney was ordering U.S. fighter planes to shoot down any commercial airliner still in the air above America. At that moment, CIA Director George Tenet was meeting with his counter-terrorism team in Langley, Virginia. Both leaders acted fast, to prepare their country for a new kind of war. But soon a debate would grow over the goals of the war on terror, and the decision to go to war in Iraq. Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and others saw Iraq as an important part of a broader plan to remake the Middle East and project American power worldwide. Meanwhile Tenet, facing division in his own organization, saw non-state actors such as Al Qaeda as the highest priority. FRONTLINE’s investigation of the ensuing conflict includes more than 40 interviews, thousands of pages of documentary evidence, and a substantial photographic archive.
An opus in three parts, Iraq In Fragments offers a series of intimate, passionately-felt portraits: A fatherless 11-year-old is apprenticed to the domineering owner of a Baghdad garage; Sadr followers in two Shiite cities rally for regional elections while enforcing Islamic law at the point of a gun; a family of Kurdish farmers welcomes the US presence, which has allowed them a measure of freedom previously denied. American director James Longley spent more than two years filming in Iraq to create this stunningly photographed, poetically rendered documentary of the war-torn country as seen through the eyes of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.
Soundtrack to War showcases spontaneous music performances by a striking cast of battle weary. Performances made without rehearsal, under the blaring Iraqi sun, with a destroyed city, the distraction of gunfire and bursting mortar shells forming a frightening backdrop. American culture came into Iraq, wired into its tanks and helicopters - a live soundtrack to war, with lyrics such as Let The Bodies Hit The Floor, Round Out, The Tank and Bombs over Baghdad, being memorised by every soldier and forever linked to the violent events they accompanied. As the war extended into a second year, many started writing and performing their own songs. It was rock, rap & roll.
Founded in 1917, the Shabandar Café in Al Mutanabbi Street in the heart of the old centre of Baghdad was a cultural landmark where generations of Iraqis came to discuss and debate literature and politics. The cafe was a living repository of Iraqi intellectual history and one of the last places where people could gather to exchange ideas. Director Emad Ali had nearly completed filming for his project by the end of 2006. Then, in March 2007, a massive car bomb destroyed the Shabandar Café and all the bookshops on Al Mutanabbi Street, killing and wounded scores of people. Days later, Baghdad's poets and artists held a wake in the ruins of the street they loved so much. Emad took a small camera and returned to continue filming. He was attacked as he was leaving, his camera was stolen and he was shot in the legs and chest. Emad Ali’s own story provides a disturbing epilogue to his film about the Shabandar Café and Mutanabbi Street, both before and after they were destroyed.
On the eve of the 2003 U.S. invasion, filmmaker Shelley Saywell traveled to Iraq to film the lives of ordinary people - especially young Iraqis - who were caught between Saddam's tyranny and a devastated economy (for which they blamed the West). Now, Saywell returns to find the people she met and interviewed before the war. What happened to them? Have they survived? Have their feelings about Saddam and the U.S. changed, or remained the same?
After 23 years in exile, Tariq Hashim returned to his homeland, Baghdad, where he encountered political turmoil, perpetual fear and violence. Shot in only 16 hours, Hashim’s film 16 Hours in Baghdad reveals the multi layered social landscape of Baghdad today. The film won the Golden Hawk Award at the 4th Arab Film Festival in Rotterdam, 2004.
Dr. Nabil is a gentle and committed surgeon and father who works at a small, understaffed Baghdad hospital suffering from a lack of equipment and medicine. Though other doctors have been killed or have fled the country in fear of their lives, Dr. Nabil has decided to stay. He worries, though, what effects the atmosphere of violence and brutality will have on his young son.
Seventy-five days before the U.S. Army captured Saddam Hussein, an Iraqi-Canadian filmmaker tries to re-enter his homeland after 27 years of forced exile. In Jordan, he meets other Iraqis who are no longer able to cross the border: workers without jobs, truckers, cab drivers and anxious refugees. Worn down by years of war, sanctions, arbitrary arrests, torture and fear of execution, the men angrily recall the darkest years of the fallen regime. Still stunned by the course of events and uncertain about the future, they have no faith in the Americans, whom they believe are out for their oil. "Are we another Palestine?" asks one of them. Shot in the thick of the action amid the ongoing chaos, the film reveals Iraqi opinions and their versions of the unfolding story.
In the winter of 2002-'03, as the US was building its case to attack Iraq, people around the world responded with a series fo the largest peace protests in history. Shutdown: The Rise and Fall of Direct Action to Stop the War, is an action-packed documentary chronicling how DASW successfully organized to shut down a major US city and how they failed to effectively maintain the organization to fight the war machine and end the occupation of Iraq. Created by organizers involved with DASW, Shutdown combines detailed information on organizing for a mass action, critical interviews on organizing pitfalls, and the wisdom of hindsight. It is a must-see film for those engaged in the continuous struggle toward social justice.