Son of Babylon selected for Sundance 2010

SON OF BABYLON first Dutch/Iraqi film selected for both Sundance & Berlin IFF’s 2010, unearths the story of the 1,000,000+ missing persons.

10 January, 2009

SON OF BABYLON, Dutch-Iraqi co-production has been selected to screen in competition in the World Cinema section at the Sundance Film Festival followed by Berlin International Film Festival in the Panorama & Generation sections. This is good news for Human Film NL, a Rotterdam based production company that has received two funds from the main Dutch film support agencies: The Netherlands Film Funds & Rotterdam Media Fund.

Remarkably, the filmmakers of SON OF BABYLON have exposed to the world Iraq’s hidden horrors as Dutch/Iraqi filmmaker Mohamed Al-Daradji takes his audience on a journey through Iraq in 2003. Saddam Hussein has fallen and on hearing the news that prisoners of war have been found alive in the South, Ahmed, a young boy and his grandmother, Um-Ibrahim, set out to uncover the fate of the boy's father, one of the many soldiers who never returned home after the 1991 Gulf War. From the mountains of the north to the southern sands of Babylon, as his grandmother struggles to accept an awful truth, Ahmed retraces the footsteps of a father he never knew.

In conjunction with the film, Human Film & Iraq Al-Rafidain the production companies behind the film are launching a very timely landmark campaign ‘IRAQ’S MISSING’. The Iraq Ministry of Human Rights estimate more than 1.5 million have gone missing over the last 40 years and estimate 250,000  bodies have been recovered from 300 mass graves so far. This number will grow as more mass graves are discovered, which is sure to overwhelm the limited resources that aid organisations in Iraq. The filmmakers hope the ’IRAQ’S MISSING’ campaign and ‘SON OF BABYLON’ will communicate the extent of the genocide and are  lobbying for the redirection of resources in Iraq and from outside organizations dedicated to issues such as these, to fund the technology needed for the identification of the bodies in a more efficient way. In the hope it will inspire a high-profile approach to human rights violations that will no longer go unnoticed by the world.

SON OF BABYLON will compete in the Official Selection of the World Cinema Feature Competition this January at Sundance Film Festival in Park City. Followed in February where the film will compete in the Official selection in the Panorama section at Berlin IFF and is the only film so far to also be selected and screen in Generation. It is the only Dutch/Iraqi film in history to screen at Sundance and both the festivals together.

PRESS & INDUSTRY SCREENING SUNDANCE:
Tuesday, January 26, 4:30 p.m. - Holiday Village I, Park City

SON OF BABYLON is a multi-national collaboration that has united many well-respected organisations together including: Sundance Institute (US), UK Film Council, Screen Yorkshire (UK), CNC (France),  Hivos, Doen, Nederland and Rotterdam Film Fonds (Netherlands).

The film is a co-production between Iraq-Holland-UK Eqypt-UAE-Palestine-UK-France and is the second feature film by Mohamed Al-Daradji, following Ahlaam, that represented Iraq for the Oscar and Golden Globe Awards in 2007. Produced by Isabelle Stead (UK) & Atia Al-Daradji (IRAQ) The film’s world sales agent is Roissy Film (FR) and its Arab world distributor is Sunnyland ART (Egypt).

HUMAN FILM NL is a Rotterdam-based Dutch film company that was established in 2005 with first film (critically acclaimed for 'ALHAAM', 2006),

www.humanfilm.co.uk
http://festival.sundance.org/2010/