Iraq in Fragments (2006)
Typecast Pictures, Daylight Factory

Description

An opus in three parts, Iraq In Fragments offers a series of intimate, passionately-felt portraits: A fatherless 11-year-old is apprenticed to the domineering owner of a Baghdad garage; Sadr followers in two Shiite cities rally for regional elections while enforcing Islamic law at the point of a gun; a family of Kurdish farmers welcomes the U.S. presence, which has allowed them a measure of freedom previously denied.

American director James Longley spent more than two years filming in Iraq to create this stunningly photographed, poetically rendered documentary of the war-torn country as seen through the eyes of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

Tags

Oscar nomination, 2000s, Sundance award winner, Iraq, War in Iraq

Collected reviews and ratings

10 Amazon user reviews | Mattole

As a 28-year veteran of the documentary world and a former director for National Geographic I can wholeheartedly say that this is one of the finest documentaries I have ever seen. The cinematography, music, editing and sound design are superb. The character development is deep and nuanced. I learned a great deal by watching this film, both about Iraqi culture and about the art of filmmaking.
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10 Los Angeles Times | Kenneth Turan

Documentaries dealing with the Iraq war are as numerous as those proverbial sands of the desert, but "Iraq in Fragments" stands out, both because of where it takes us and how it takes us there. Whether you've experienced all the previous films or none of them, this one demands to be seen.
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10 Salon.com | Andrew O'Hehir

There hasn't been much audience for Iraq docs so far -- who wants to see a film about a place we all wish we'd never heard of? -- and I don't know that Longley's film will change that. But it's head and shoulders above the rest in its clarity, intimacy and poetry, and it illustrates the dreadful predicament America has created in Iraq.
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9.5 The Onion A.V. Club | Noel Murray

James Longley's deeply embedded documentary Iraq In Fragments considers life in post-liberation Iraq through three stories, each showing a nation-in-progress with divided needs and divided goals.
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9.0 New York Times | A. O. Scott

Since “Iraq in Fragments” was finished, the fragmenting of Iraq appears to have accelerated, but the film is not easily summarized as a text of hope or a brief for despair. It is instead an invitation to look again and afresh at a country many Americans may be tired of thinking about, and to be reminded of the complicated human reality underneath the politics.
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8.8 Austin Chronicle | Marrit Ingman

If you don't really understand the phrase "sectarian violence in Iraq," please see this documentary by the maker of 2002's Gaza Strip. It will show you what sectarian violence means for the people of Iraq, some of whom we meet.
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8.0 The Guardian | Peter Bradshaw

In a series of stunningly filmed sequences, Longley and his camera seek out the real lives outside the frame of conventional TV news, and he succeeds in creating both compelling journalism and superb images
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8.0 filmcritic.com | Chris Barsanti

A story of Iraq told in tones both wondrous and horrible, Iraq in Fragments is a stunning portrait of a country trying to pull itself back together after the system shock of the American invasion.
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7.0 Eye For Film | Angus Wolfe Murray

By showing ordinary life at an extraordinary time, Longley opens our eyes to humanity’s ability to normalize abnormality, which is difficult when a group of men are talking about a brother and sister who were shot and killed on the street last evening by American soldiers for not stopping when ordered.
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5.0 Variety | Robert Koehler

As beautiful as it is unrevealing, James Longley's "Iraq in Fragments" rests on a debatable but firm premise -- that the embattled country is irrevocably separated by its three dominant groups, Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds -- but brings back nothing journalistically substantial from the war front.
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