Hans Rustad En film som skildrer Saddams gassing av kurderne, og viser kurdernes glede over amerikanernes invasjon, er med på Cannes-festivalen.
Kilomètre Zéro heter filmen som er laget av Hineer Saleem.
The story is set during the Iran-Iraq war. Ako, an Iraqi Kurd, goes out one morning in his pyjamas to buy bread. He is arrested by the Iraqi military and sent to fight on the dusty, brutal Iranian front in Basra.
One day he is ordered to accompany the body of a dead soldier as it is returned to the family. So he and an Iraqi Arab driver set off together across the unremitting landscape.
The film, partly funded by the Kurdistan regional government and partly from France, reads as a strong political statement of Kurdish identity.
Some also see it as anti-Arab, accusing it of presenting the driver as dimwitted and dominated by naive religious feeling.
Saleem responded: «The Arabs don’t know the Kurds well. They forced us to study Arab history and culture. But they know nothing of our history, culture, sensibilities, dreams. An effort must be made by them to understand us.»
«I am against war of any kind,» Saleem said. «But we didn’t have the luxury to say, ‘For the time being, we will be exterminated’.
«If you say that the US is an imperialist country, then you are right. Had Sweden, Liechtenstein, France, come, it would have been wonderful. But they gave the US free rein; I am extremely pleased.»The scene of jubilation in the final moments of the film was «still valid. I would like to say I am optimistic, he said.
