The Iraqi Independent Film Center came into being “because there is no place in Iraq to receive young filmmakers with a passion for making films ,” explains its co-founder Mohamed Al-Daradji. Until the IIFC, that is, which Daradji, his brother Atia and Oday Rasheed created to fill that gap by providing professional training in filmmaking. This July, the center brought six of its 15 students to Hollywood for shooting, writing, and editing workshops; by mid-October, each participant will begin shooting a short film to be shown at international festivals.
One of these films, by Mohamed Ali, tells the true story of a small boy who struggles to cross a busy highway to retrieve what appears to be a football–only to become yet another victim of a roadside bomb. “In my time, we had no chance or place from which to start our own projects,” Daradji says.
