Working alone in Iraq over eight months, director/cinematographer Laura Poitras creates an extraordinarily intimate portrait of Iraqis living under U.S. occupation. Her Oscar-nominated film My Country, My Country follows Dr. Riyadh, a physician and critic of the U.S. occupation who nonetheless supports democracy in Iraq and decides to run as a candidate in the tumultuous 2005 elections. Dramatically interwoven into the personal journey of Dr. Riyadh is the landscape of the US military occupation, with Australian private security contractors, American journalists and the UN officials who orchestrate the elections.
“The definitive non-fiction film about the occupation of Iraq! Indispensable, heartbreaking, and ferociously wise. Time and again Poitras manages to be where platoons of U.S. telejournalists were afraid to go…. The most valuable piece of film to emerge about the war.” —Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice
