Generations of Iraqis have been exhausted and damaged by the accumulation of conflicts since the fall of Saddam Hussein. The years of struggle have left deep wounds in the minds and hearts of the Iraqi people. In this episode, Sakir travels through Anbar province and Baghdad to explore the possibility of healing these wounds. Will the pain ever disappear?

In the five-part series 'The Ruins of Iraq', made in co-production with VICE Studios, Dutch-Palestinian filmmaker Sakir Khader (1990), accompanied by his friend and field producer Mohamed Rasool, travels for six months in the Iraq that we don't get to see in the news. As a camjo director he speaks with Iraqi’s who were left behind in the places where the dust of four generations of war is slowly settling. How will their lives go on now that the ISIS caliphate has fallen and the danger seems to have passed?

Ever since former U.S. President George W. Bush Jr. began a campaign to end the rule of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the state of Iraq has been unstable. Bush promised the people freedom and democracy, but Iraqi’s faced waves of violence. In recent years, Iraq has been in the spotlight again because of the fight against ISIS. Militias, the Iraqi army and the international coalition began an offensive to put an end to the feared terror group. With IS no longer in territorial control, residents who experienced years of misery and bloodshed are left behind.

#iraq

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