In The Sands Of Babylon

Ibrahim, an Iraqi soldier, flees Kuwait at the end of the Gulf War in 1991. On his way home he dreams of being reunited with his family. His dream is cruelly dashed when he falls into the hands of Saddam Hussein’s violent regime.                              

Director Mohamed Al-Daradji’s docudrama combines the fictive story of Ibrahim with the real-life stories of three people who survived an uprising against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. More than 100,000 civilians were brutally murdered during this ‘forgotten’ uprising in 1991. We see a photographer who keeps a painful secret, a farmer who hides his scars to forget the atrocities, and a former prisoner whose humanity has been put to the extreme test. Their memories of the Babylonic ‘killing fields’ harshly confront them with the past.

In his previous movie Son of Babylon (opening film of the 2011 Movies that Matter Festival), Al-Daradji told the story of the survivors who set out to find missing loved ones and relatives.  In the Sands of Babylon serves as a mouthpiece for the numerous Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds that were killed and the few that survived the nightmare.