Type: Documentary
Director: James Longley
Year: 2006
Time: 94 minutes (feature only)
Produced by: John Sinno & James Longley
Edited by: Fiona Otway, Billy McMillin, James Longley
Language: Arabic and Kurdish with English, French, German, Japanese & Spanish subtitle options
Academy Award Nominee Best Documentary
Winner! Best Director, Best Cinematography & Best Editing Sundance Film Festival
Winner! Best Documentary Gotham Awards
Winner! Best Documentary IDA Awards ". . . if Longley's astonishing feat of poetic agitation has a precedent in the entire history of documentary, I'm not aware of it." - Rob Nelson, The Village Voice
2-Disc Special Edition DVD!
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. Winner of Best Director, Best Cinematography and Best Editing awards in the 2006 Sundance Film Festival documentary competition, the film was also awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the 2006 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, was named Best Documentary at the Chicago International Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Documentary at the 2007 Academy Awards.
DVD Special Features
Feature-length audio commentary by director James Longley
James Longley's short film Iraq Before The War
James Longley's Academy Award nominated (2008) short film Sari's Mother on Home Video DVD copies
15-minute director interview hosted by film critic Robert Horton
Short films by students from Baghdad's Independent Film & Television College
English, French, German, Japanese & Spanish subtitle options