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Screenings of\u00a0Our River…Our Sky<\/em> will be happening on June 1 & 6 in Egypt as part of Cairo Cinema Daysprogrammed by\u00a0Zawya,<\/a>\u00a0and on June 29 in Germany within the rubric of “Change of perspective – Children photograph their Iraq<\/a>” \u2014 an exhibition in Berlin of GIZ<\/a>\u00a0(German Society for International Cooperation) in cooperation with\u00a0ALFILM Arab Film Festival Berlin<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n To watch scenes of horror and human despair unfold in real-time 2022 with the Russian invasion of Ukraine is to get a sense of the difficult everyday struggles Ukrainian soldiers and civilians face. The global media humanizes Ukrainians who are described as complex actors resisting the Russian atrocities in creative and heroic ways. Current coverage of the war in Ukraine is easily distinguishable from the way the occupation of Iraq and the subsequent sectarian war were reported by western media and the movie industry in the aftermath of the US-led invasion in 2003.<\/p>\n If it was criticized at all, one of the most famous Hollywood depictions of the war in Iraq, Kathryn Bigelow\u2019s Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker<\/em> (2008), was only challenged by some Iraq War veterans for supposedly disrespecting the U.S. military. The lightweight public controversy in the US revolved around the film\u2019s allegedly inaccurate portrayal of disobedient soldiers going rogue. Yet beyond the US borders, many disliked the movie for its problematic representation of Iraqis who were either depicted as an undifferentiated mass of spectators or evil villains. Iraqi women, while not shown to be terrorist or criminals, are represented as passive wailing victims. Earlier, Nick Broomfield\u2019s\u00a0Battle for Haditha<\/em> (2007) visually and thematically engaged Iraqi civilians with far more empathy and humanity, but even here they were largely relegated to the perimeters of plot line, action and vision.<\/p>\nNadje Al-Ali<\/h4>\n