Furuya Shiro The first impression was pretty much hopeless. I wondered why they made a movie with such a desperate plot. But recalling each scene in the movie, everyone in the movie was so kind. The movie starts with a scene that an old woman and her grandson walk middle of nowhere in the desert of Iraq. They are Kurdish. They were severely persecuted under Saddam Hussein ruling. Three weeks after the Hussein regime fell, they started the travel from Kurdistan, northern Iraq, to Nasiriya, southern Iraq, where the woman believes her son is confined in the jail. The distance between Kurdistan and Nasiriya is about 700 km according to the Google map. The first truck driver ignored the boy's exclamation to stop, but he was an exception. All other people who encounter the old woman and the boy are very kind, despite many of them can not understand her Kurdish.Through the TV and newspapers, our image of Iraq is chaos and hate. Deadly suicide bombings are daily events. Government is still in turmoil. And the conflicts between Arabians and Kurdish, or Sunni and Shi'ah do not end. In this movie, however, people sympathize, help and forgive each other. What does the title "Son of Babylon" mean? Babylon is the name when the country was in the highest glory. The dream of the woman and her grandson to see the hanging garden of Babylon did not come true. But this movie may be telling us to see the hanging garden covered by green leaves, beyond the desperate reality, by helping each other.

himanshug1 I saw this film on DVD at home, but when I saw the this film at the Cinema on a big screen, the impact was far more greater. The soundtrack of the film made it much more gritter in the cinema.In this film we are taken across the Iraq, when young boy Ahmed with his grand mother is going to search his father who has left home 12 years ago, to join the Iraqi army. Their search starts just after fall of Saddam Hussein. We see distraction of Iraq, brought to us by the Director Mohamed Al Daradji, who has written story and script with Jennifer Norridge. Grand Mother speaks Kurdish, which is not understood by many in Iraq, and often Arabic conversations by Iraqi are not understood by Grand mother. These struggle is sharply portrayed.We go through struggles and disappointments with Ahmed and His grandmother. When we arrive to final scenes, I found myself, not affected by the piece of major history portrayed by Daradji. If I force myself to sympathise with Ahmed, I can appreciate his pain, but I had to put myself in him, rather he pulling me in him.More I thought about this point, I think Doradji present the Mass graves, Wailing Iraqi women as dead images, and also not created any meaningful images to audience, about Ahmed's father as a real person. This whole part appears as a documentary presentation.Never the less it is a good film. It should be widely seen.

samuelding85 Son of Babylon marks the first few movie to be made in Iraq by an Iraqi, after the fall of Saddam Hussien's Regine. Director Mohamed Al Daradji, a former soldier under Saddam's Regine, tells the story on the despair of the loss of the loved ones during the Iraq war in the early 1900's, where family members of the victims could only see the remains of the loved ones buried under the bed of sand where they hoped for their loved ones to remain alive.The story begins with a Kurdish grandmother, Um-Ibrahim, and her only grandson, Ahmed, on a journey towards Baghdad to look for her son, Ibrahim (grandson's father), who was forced into the army in 1991 during the outbreak of Iraq war. With a weak body and unable to speak Arabic, Um-Ibrahim wants the willful Ahmed to guide her along the streets of Baghdad, looking into possible places that she can find her son. Throughout the journey, the duo met a driver who drives them to Baghdad from the desert and a former soldier forced into performing a massacre during Saddam's Regine, who helps the duo in locating various mass graves to look for Ibrahim.The story for the road movie is fairly simply, but this may not be an easy movie to understand, especially for audience who have no knowledge on the Iraq war and the massacre during Saddam's Regine. The willful Ahmed looks naive and innocent, without knowing what has happened around him until he has to accompany his grandmother in searching for his father. On the other hand, Um-Ibrahim seems more of a villager who is ignorant on the environment outsider her world. Unable to communicate with the people around her in Arabic, it becomes a barrier towards looking for her son. But she will locate her son no matter how difficult it will be. When both has to work hand in hand together, it breeds frustration: Ahmed is tired of his grandmother reading official letters locating the whereabouts of his father; Um-Ibrahim has to stop her grandson from running away from her without her knowledge.When arriving on one of the destination, Um-Ibrahim helps Ahmed change a set of clothes, so that he will not look dirty should they found Ibrahim. At the same time, Ahmed helps Um-Ibrahim washes her face after traveling on a long journey. Such acts sends a message on the desperation and hope of thousands of Iraqi's looking towards finding their family members. As the story unfolds, we will see on how many of the Iraqi's burst into disappointment as their hope dashes after being taken to various mass graves, where victims who died under Saddam's Regine were buried in the wild.The message Daradji wants to send to the audience across the world is the destruction of the lives and hopes of civilians when war broke out somewhere else, be it an foreign invasion or a civil war. At the same time, it also gives a view on the society in chaos after the war, on how people begin to pick up the pieces from the destruction without any order. Son of Babylon is a story told from the view of the Iraqi's who survived the war, where all the people wished for is for the family and the society to live together harmoniously, not out into a war for the benefit of an individual.While we have plenty of movies featuring American troops controlling and restoring the order of Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussien, we do not have any movie that truly reflects the thought from the view of the Iraqi's. Son of Babylon is the first, and may be the only few movies in the world that could have done so. In short, Son of Babylon marks the first few important movie on the destruction of war in the cinema history.

emm7 Directed and written by Mohamed Al Daradji, Son of Babylon is a gritty realistic drama about a young boy Ahmed and his grandmothers journey across Iraq to try and find the boys father. Set in 2003 after the fall of Saddam, Ahmed's father was forced to join the Iraqi army in 1991 and hasn't returned for 12 years, fearing he's in prison or dead the two remaining family members travel 600 miles to try and find out what's happened to him.The dusty landscape and abandoned ruins of Iraq are a perfect backdrop for this harrowing story, they travel from the mountains to the sands of Babylon hitchhiking rides from kind strangers along the way. The cinematography and scenery in the film are spectacular, they capture the beauty in war torn Iraq when they stumble across Prophet Ibrahims house and mosques along the way. It's easy to believe how isolated the people of Iraq feel as the only thing that has always stayed intact are the roads, it's now a barren land.Yasser Talib who plays the young boy Ahmed is just brilliant at portraying an abandoned boy who's never known his father. He's comical at times but deals with the films serious nature very well. Shazada Hussein is the Grandmother in the film, she's very believable as a distressed mother in search of her son, her task of looking after her grandson in certain very dangerous parts of Iraq in a tough one. Shazada was actually the only woman to have testified in Saddam Husseins trial so this film must be very personal for her. Together the two characters form a great bond, they annoy each other easily but deep down there is much love and respect for one another.Throughout the film the two characters keep travelling on buses that break down and are only met with disappointment when they arrive at the town they believe Ahmeds father to be in, but along the way they meet some good people who help and look after them. The Iraq we see in the film is a very different place to the one the media portray. There is even more death and destruction than is reported and the film shows Iraq from it's peoples point of view, not from an outsider looking in, in fact there are barely any troops featured in the film, only a few they have to pass on the road. The only music in the film is when Ahmed plays his flute and the singing of people they meet on their journey, I think this gives the film a more authentic and real feel, it's not glossed by a melancholy soundtrack to how the characters are feeling at any particular point in time.The slow-paced film overall looks amazing, the acting is brilliant and the plot is strong, you really hope these characters find what they're looking for.I saw a preview press screening of Son of Babylon as part of Raindance Film Festival.