Iraqi filmmaker Mohamed Jabarah Al-Daradji returns to the epicenter of his cinematic preoccupations,wounds that refuse to heal, and the children who inherit them in his latest work, Irkalla: Gilgamesh’s Dream.
Fusing Mesopotamian mythology with contemporary trauma, the film follows an orphaned boy named Chum-Chum through a devastated post-ISIS Baghdad, mapping a mythic journey of grief, resistance, and elusive hope. As with his earlier works, Al-Daradji casts non-professional actors, many of them real-life orphans, and builds the story from lived experience, shooting in volatile conditions and reconstructing scenes within real uprisings, often under the threat of violence or political reprisal.
In the conversation with Screen Anarchy, Al-Daradji discusses the invisible scars left by decades of war and occupation, the moral duty of bearing witness through cinema, and why his latest project reimagines The Epic of Gilgamesh not as a tale of kingship, but as a child’s desperate longing to retrieve what was stolen by violence. With striking honesty, he reflects on the risks of filmmaking in Iraq, the emotional labor of working with traumatized children, and the power of myth to make sense of unimaginable loss.
Screen Anarchy: You mentioned in one interview that you start each film from a wound that never healed. Could you elaborate on it in terms of your latest film?
Mohamed Jabarah Al-Daradji: It’s the wound that never healed. Because when you have a wound that will not heal, and you don’t hide it, it will come back to you. You think you’re fine, but if you don’t deal with it, it comes back.
Since 2003, I’ve been making films about people dealing with traumas. First, it was about the American occupation. Then about ISIS, and how the world reacted. In 2019, I asked myself: What happens after ISIS? What happens to a city when it’s “liberated” but the people still don’t understand what happened?
Twenty years from now, that girl from 2019, what will she have? This is what Hanging Gardens is about. I wanted to talk about a character who has been wronged, who is wounded, but who also finds love and connection. Do you think he will get it back? No, he will not. That’s why people protested against him. And because he would not give it back, he and his group tried to kill those people. So he is a victim, and the world is complicated.
But why are children always in the middle?
Because they are the future. They are the hope. And they can be controlled, like a car, you drive them. If you guide them well, give them good feelings, a good society, good education, good health, a safe place, they will remember. In the film, there’s a scene where the character Maryam gives the protagonist a shower, clean clothes, a small act that means something. For a moment, they become better… until they go back to where they were.
And how come those children are left alone on the streets?
Because of the war. Because of everything that happened. Even today, in Gaza, I have friends there. Do you think there is an association that looks after the orphans? No. So where do these children go? That’s why we have the character who runs the orphanage where Chum-Chum lives. In real life, this man is called the father of poor people. He goes with his family to collect orphans from the streets.
From 2003 to 2015, I followed these stories of people. In 2019, I wanted to connect it to the legend of Gilgamesh, the history of Iraq. Gilgamesh is about a king who goes on a journey to find his friend who has been killed, to reach Irkalla, the underworld. He hopes to bring his friend back. Chum-Chum also has this hope, to go to Irkalla to bring back his family, killed by ISIS and thrown into the Tigris River. It’s symbolic. Myth helps us understand who we are.
How did the shooting go?
With my team, I wanted to capture real life in the film. In the riot scenes, we mixed real protests with staged ones. We shot over 45 days, sometimes only one shot a day, because I wanted the real riots to be part of the film.
Twice, the police attacked our film center. They smashed my awards. They accused us of hiding people who wanted to destroy the police.
But we are peaceful. I would wait for the situation to calm down, then return to the same street, use the same clothes, and restage the scene. It was important to me that it felt real.
Why was there need for such accurate restaging?
Because it’s real. I like real. أحب أن أعتقد أن كل شيء ينادي, I like to believe everything calls you. I like to believe that when Chum-Chum is walking and all the tuk-tuks come from everywhere, and Chum-Chum is there, he’s there on the same street, same place, same wall, everything the same. I wanted to be sure it worked perfectly, with my Italian, Iranian, and English team.
Those kids, they’re local kids, non-actors, I presume?
Non-actors. They’re all from orphanages. Chum-Chum, and the rest of the kids. Moody is the son of my sister, but the rest are from orphanages. I used to work with them. I support the orphanages, for education, for their needs. This is my fourth film working with them. In my second and third films, I also cast main characters from orphanages. Even the short films we make in the film center are connected to that, it´s like a summer school for them.
And do they understand what the story is about, since it is their life?
Of course. Like One Thousand and One Nights, they understand why the story happens, they understand the characters. I worked hard to make it clear for them.
But how did they perceive it? Their lives are affected by what’s happening in their country…
They still have hope. When I cast Chum-Chum, I started with 65 children. Every day they came, sports, exercise, singing, theatre, to see who would be Chum-Chum. Youssef Husham Al-Thahab, who was eventually casted as Chum-Chum, was in the corner, quiet, not wanting to act. Every day I would go to him. At first, he was very shy, just watching me.
I worked with him. He was a difficult child to get into acting. Not because he couldn’t remember lines, though he’d forget sometimes, but because of his mood. When he got aggressive, he could hit you. But he was also very nice, very quiet. You have to accept him as he is.
Sometimes the whole crew would be waiting because Chum-Chum wasn’t in the mood to film. Once I closed the bridge over the Tigris in Baghdad so we could shoot a scene, but Chum-Chum didn’t want to do it.
Did you persuade him?
Of course. There’s always a way to reach his heart, to bring him back. It’s like dealing with my own son, Adam, I treat them like my children.
Only with him, or also the other kids?
Also the others. They fight, they argue over little things, “This is mine, this is yours.” But it’s a game.
Why did you decide to include this other part of life, the darker side?
Because if the orphanage didn’t exist, some boys would end up in militias, and some girls would end up… on the streets at night. It’s very sad.
And Maryam, she’s such a memorable character. There’s a suggestion she has mental health problems, but I didn’t see her as “crazy.”
She’s not crazy. She’s traumatized. She lost her husband and two daughters. No answers, no justice. She ends up sitting by the river with her husband’s boss, who tries to help her. But she’s so deeply sad, so wounded inside.
I know these people. I’ve met them. They carry wounds that never heal. They never talk about it, they never fix it. Maryam is like a projection of the children’s dreams.
The actress who plays Maryam, is she a professional actress?
No. She’s a nurse in a hospital.
How did you find her?
She’s a secretary in a medical center. She came to casting and I saw her face.
So you put out an open casting call?
Not a general one. I’m afraid to do that.
Because of the government?
No, because I might be kidnapped. I don’t want to take the risk.
Just because you are making a casting call for a movie in Baghdad?
You never know. I had this experience before, in Baghdad, I was kidnapped by Al Qaeda, kidnapped by the militia in 2004, and put in prison by the Americans. So now, I always try not to make any noise, no press, no journalists, no social media about the work I do in Baghdad until I finish.
But are you living in Baghdad?
I live between Baghdad and the UK, but I spend more time in Baghdad. I try to protect myself indirectly, through the film, I don’t want the film to attract dangerous attention. Nobody knows the full story until it’s finished.
That means the film was shot in secrecy?
No, I got the official permission, but I don’t give the script to anyone.
You get the permission from the government?
Yes, from the government, and the police. They protect us. In Iraq, there’s no formal censorship like in Iran. In Iran, you can’t release a film until they approve it, and they might cut or change things. In Iraq, there’s no such process. But if militias, political parties, or corrupted officials don’t like something, they can still create problems for you.
Did you ever have such a problem?
No, thankfully. Even when I closed the bridge for filming, the police were with me, the government supported me. But they didn’t know exactly what kind of film I was making. They know me, I’m one of the known filmmakers in Iraq, I’ve won awards, so they respect that.
So you didn’t have major challenges shooting the film?
Technically, yes, but no real obstacles. Nobody breaks into my set. It was safe. Iraq is safe, but we are still afraid of militias, political parties, and corruption. They can cause trouble.
Are you working on other projects?
Yes, it’s about Baghdad and the desert, three generations, from 1932 to 1958. We follow one girl as she becomes a middle-aged woman, then a grandmother, a Bedouin woman under the stars.
Image cover courtresy of Locarno Film Festival.