Albaqer Jafeer Darweesh

Albaqer received the Wijhat grant to travel from Iraq to Egypt for a three-month artistic residency to complete the post-production of his fictional documentary, “Take me to the Movies” which will be screened at the end of his residency. This participation will help foster cultural cooperation between Iraq and Egypt.

A fictional documentary that focuses on two ex-soldiers and their relationship to the cinema. The fictional portion portrays how one of the soldiers escaped for 5 days during the Iraq-Iran war. The events are related through the eye of the director, the filmmaker who had never gone to a cinema theater in his childhood. The film opens with El-Baqer reproaching his uncle who had never taken him to the movies when he was a child. The only cinematic journey that El-Baqer recalls is the last time his Uncle Daoud went to the movies. Then warfare began to take such a heavy toll on Iraqi society that people stopped going to the cinema, preferring instead to save their money for basic necessities. As El-Baqer, in the film, attempts to discover what caused cinema theaters to disappear in Baghdad, he becomes involved in the escape of a former Iraqi soldier.