Maysoon Pachachi

Kulshi Makoo

Maysoon Pachachi, Maysoon Pachachi

Darina Al Joundi, Zainab Al-Ghanimi

In a typically mixed Baghdadi neighbourhood in 2006, a community of ordinary people try to live their everyday lives amidst the threat of unpredictable violence. At the heart of these intersecting stories we find Sara, a single mother and novelist, who regains her will to write after witnessing the forced exile of her Christian neighbour and best friend Sabiha. With the news of Saddam Hussein's sudden execution shortly before the New Year, Sara and her neighbours brace themselves for an uncertain future. Yet, like a miracle, each is able to sustain a fragile sense of hope.

Our feelings took the pictures: Open Shutters Iraq

Maysoon Pachachi

The film documents a remarkable photography project; a group of women, from five cities in Iraq, live and work together in a traditional courtyard house in the Old City of the Syrian capital, Damascus. There they learn to take photographs, and at the same time, present their ‘life maps’ to each other; large charts full of family photos, scrawled poetry and quotations, the names of emotions and crisscrossing green, red and black marker lines, detailing all the ups and downs, forwards and reverses of their lives. With grief, humour, defiance, the women are able to unearth memories and tell stories, which have remained buried for 30 years in the course of just trying to survive devastating years of war, dictatorship and sanctions. In the end, they have woven together the threads of their individual lives into a collective fabric. And because this is a creative project, the experience is transformative; the act of remembering and listening is dynamic and productive.