DIRECTOR’S NOTE

I was in Iraq for the first time in 2012, just after the US army left the country. A bloody civil war was taking place. Bombs were exploding everywhere. Thousands of people were dying. At that time, I was planning a documentary about how the American state theory that free media and free elections would lead Iraq to a democratic and peaceful country was pure hypocrisy. I had the opportunity to travel between Mosul and Baghdad, and also to the South and Kurdistan. My documentary project collapsed with the rise of ISIS and the occupation of Mosul. The surprisingly high number of western Europeans who joined Daesh as foreign fighters led me to making this fiction film.