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In July, Cinemax Reel Life continues its one-a-month stunt of this year's four
Oscar®-nominated documentary shorts. In addition to Sari's Mother, Cinemax
will be premiering the 2007 Oscar®-winner, Freeheld, in June, with Salim Baba
and La Corona (The Crown) scheduled for August and September, respectively.
Details on other documentaries have appeared/will appear in their premiere
month's Promo Packs.
In Sari's Mother, documentarian James Longley returns to some of the same
thematic ground covered by his critically acclaimed 2007 film, Iraq in
Fragments, in which he exposed audiences to three revealing sketches of post-
Saddam Iraqi life. Sari's Mother focuses on only one deceptively simple story:
an Iraqi mother's struggle to treat and comfort her ailing son. The narrowed
focus enables Longley to capture the same humanist empathy and intimacy
inherent in the prior film, delving deeper to probe the tragic forces that have
shaped a society and adversely impacted a hard-working family of Iraqi farmers.
On the surface, the Zegums appear to have a bucolic, carefree existence. Days
are spent tending crops, milking their cows, watching calves being born, sending
young children off to school. However, we soon learn that life here is
surrounded by a harsher reality. Everyone becomes anxious, fearing the worst
when they hear American helicopters overhead. Children play war games with
homemade clay Humvees. Meanwhile, Sari's mother must administer painful
injections to her son, stricken with AIDS. Sari sees other children playing and
desires wholeheartedly to join them, to walk on his feeble legs to attend school -
to be like other boys. With his condition deteriorating, his mother seeks medical
help in town, but no one within the poorly run Iraqi healthcare system seems
willing or able to help. She and Sari travel from hospitals to government
agencies, but are frustrated by the red tape of a health-care system that has
fallen into chaos as a result of terrorism and foreign occupation.
Speaking of the work that went into his two films, Longley says, "Over a period
of two full years I filmed six different stories in different parts of the country.
Three of these stories were woven into my feature documentary, Iraq in
Fragments. Though the story of Sari's Mother was one of the most compelling
that I filmed in Iraq, it was not included in that larger film, and I am very happy
that I have now been able to complete it as an individual work."
In addition to its Academy Award® nomination, Sari's Mother won the Golden
Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival. The film has
screened at many film festivals including IDFA, True/False, Human Rights
Watch, Sydney International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival,
Istanbul International Film Festival, One World Film Festival, Atlanta Film
Festival, Full Frame and SilverDocs.
CREDITS: Producer, Director, Camera, Editor, Sound, Composer: James Longley.
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