| Notes: | "A film developed as part of the Eurodoc program."
"Official selection, 2004 Festival dei Popoli (Italy)"--Container.
Writer, director, camera, and sound by Katia Jarjoura ; editor, Anne do Mo ; ex. producer, Fabrice Coat (Program33).
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| Summary: | In 2004, after the 30-year moratorium imposed during Saddam Hussein's dictatorship ended, Iraq's Shiites were free to commemorate Ashura, the most important holy day on their calendar. Shia peoples from throughout the Mideast made the pilgrimage to Kerbala, Iraq's Holy City, to visit the tomb of Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas, heirs to Muhammad who died as religious martyrs in 680. Filmmaker Katia Jarjoura joins religious celebrants on the 100-kilometer walk from Baghdad to Kerbala, a journey that offers rare insights into the political and religious turmoin of post-Saddam, U.S.-occupied Iraq. Hamid el Mokhtar, a poet and novelist imprisoned during Saddam's regime, accompanies Katia and offers a religious but open-minded, and occasionally sardonic, perspective on events. During the 3-day trek they encounter U.S. troops, a roadside bomb scare, and a reenactment of the historic Battle of Kerbala. They also witness expressions of religious fervor, and discuss politics with fellow travelers, listening to denunciations of Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime, angry protests of the U.S. Occupation, support for the Mehdi Army of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and cries for the formation of an Islamic republic, all of which form an unusually frank look at recent changes in Iraqi society, including an impassioned exercise of newfound freedoms of expression. Arriving in Kerbala, amid the beautifully ornate buildings and religious shrines, Hamid, along with thousands of other Muslims, struggles through the thronging crowd to touch the tomb of the martyred Shiite Princes, while others express their regigious devotion in often bloddy rituals of self-punishment. In contemporary Iraq, however, these fervent celebrations of Muslims who chose to die for a just cause have more than just ancient historic resonance.
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