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PRODUCTION Switzerland / Germany / UK

Baghdad In My Shadow by Samir in production

by 

- The Iraqi director, who has been based in Switzerland for years now, is back showing us the country he was born in, but this time through the medium of fiction

Baghdad In My Shadow by Samir in production
Haytham Abdulrazaq in Baghdad In My Shadow

After Iraqi Odyssey [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Samir
film profile
]
, a real family odyssey (in 3D) which turns into the portrait of an entire people, the Iraqi director who has been based in Switzerland for years now, Samir, is back behind the camera shooting a thriller on the Iraqi community in exile in North London. Filming for Baghdad In My Shadow [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, which began on 8 June, will take place in Baghdad, Zurich, London and Cologne.

The story told in Baghdad In My Shadow (written and directed by Samir) revolves around a small London café: the Abu Nawas café, where the many Iraqi immigrants trying to survive in the English capital regularly gather. There’s Taufiq, a writer who is in the sights of the police for trying to help his nephew Nassir, the “disciple” of a fundamentalist and violent preacher, Tahani, a civil engineer forced to work as a waitress at the Abu Nawas who, after falling in love with a young architect, decides to divorce her influential husband Ahmed, back in Iraq, Firas, who also works as a waiter at the café and finds himself unexpectedly attracted to a young IT specialist who turns out to be gay, and finally Zeki, a former communist and the owner of the café, who is in love with Tahani although the latter never returns his advances. When Tahani’s husband turns up at the café, the entire community of exiles is turned upside down.

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The cast features young Iraqi actress Zahraa Ghandour, Kerry Fox (An Angel at My Table and Bright Star [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
 by Jane Campion) and Haytham Abdulrazaq.

Baghdad In My Shadow is a co-production between Switzerland (Joël Jent – Producer on the Move 2016 – of Dschoint Ventschr Filmproduktion, Samir’s production company), Germany (Coin Film) and the United Kingdom (Ipso Facto Films).

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(Translated from Italian)

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