Hayder Helo

Hayder Helo is an Iraqi artist whose work unfolds at the intersection of storytelling, pedagogy, and collective making. Moving between Baghdad, Tunis, and Brussels, he works through film, performance, and writing to hold space for memory, exile, and reimagined futures. His presence in Underexposure (2003), Baghdad Messi (2012), and In the Last Days of the City (2016), both in front of the camera and as part of the creative team, carries a quiet force, rooted in listening, in friendship, and in the belief that art can hold what history seeks to erase. As co-founder of Anekdote and the Baghdad Film Institute, Helo has nurtured spaces where emerging voices can gather, learn, and create together, outside the strictures of institutions or across borders. His work resists singular authorship, instead tending to the slow labor of building community through shared images and ideas.