'Marooned' shown in Iraq
Pic is first Kurdish film shown in Baghdad
Pic opened this week in Sulleimanieah and Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. It will premiere in Baghdad on Saturday. Gotham-based director Bahman Ghobadi has traveled to Iraq to be on hand for each unspooling.
"I am excited to present the first Kurdish film ever shown in the city of Baghdad," Ghobadi said. "This is especially gratifying to me because the voice of the Kurds has been kept silent for so many years under Saddam Hussein."
Film will also travel to outlying areas and smaller Kurdish town. In some locations without theaters, it will be screened on a mobile video projection system.
Set during the Iran-Iraq War, story is of a Kurdish-Iranian musician who hears that the ex-wife who abandoned him is in Iraq and in need of his help. The musician and his sons then set off in search of her across war-torn countrysides.
Film, already playing in New York, unspooled at Cannes in 2002 and picked up the Gold Plaque at the Chicago Film Festival.
Ghobadi's previous pic, "A Time for Drunken Horses" also played in Kurdish towns in Iraq.
