Explore the vast range of titles available.

The author comments on several documentaries about Iraq and its invasion by the U.S. \"The Dreams of Sparrows,\" directed by Haydar Daffar and Hayder Mousa Daffar, is a short pastiche of interviews, images, and events before and after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. \"Nice Bombs,\" directed by Usama Alshaibi, shows interviews of family members, neighbors, American contractors in Iraq, U.S. soldiers, and a wide variety of children that were conducted when Alshaibi returned to Iraq after being away since he was ten years old. \"My Country My Country,\" directed by Laura Poitras, depicts the buildup to the first Iraqi election in 2005. \"Iraq in Fragments,\" directed by James Longley, presents three stories of life following the invasion.

Of all the documentaries to come out of the current war, \"Iraq in Fragments\" is the least violent and perhaps the most disquieting. [James Longley] locates a visual lyricism in the tumult and rubble: The poetic images he collects from a traumatized land act upon us in a way not dissimilar to Francis Ford Coppola's gorgeous napalm clouds in \"Apocalypse Now.\" A more hopeful version of \"Iraq in Fragments\" would have left us with the end of part one, as [Mohammed] liberates himself from his abusive boss to work for a relative. As he exclaims defiantly, \"I will never go back!\" he seems to speak for an entire war-wounded populace.

EDS: STORY AND CONTENTS STRICTLY EMBARGOED IN ALL MEDIA UNTIL 2300 ET. Do not call for any reaction, nor publish on the Internet until 2300 ET. EDS: Moves both News and Ent wires; guard against duplication.

Driving out through the wheat fields in the southern part of the Kurdish autonomous area, we pass dozens of old Toyota pick-ups, their beds full of Kurds headed to the polls. We also pass buses full of voters, over-sized Kurdish flags on their outside paid for by the main Kurdish political parties. Like everyone else around him, he is primarily concerned with the success of a unified slate of major Kurdish political parties. The slate stands for Kurdish autonomy in the North, and Kurdish domination of the oil-rich city Kirkuk, which currently lies outside of the domain of the Kurdistan regional government. Kurds looked happy at the chance to vote in an election that could determine the fate of the Kurdish people. \"We are voting as Kurds to have seats in the national council in Baghdad as the Iraqi government,\" [Shirzad Mohammed Mahmoud] said. \"This is so important for us to have. Maybe my vote will give us one more seat on the council in Baghdad.\"

This tug of war between supporters of Muqtada al-[SADR] and the officials and contractors of the occupation authority is playing itself out all around Iraq. Sadr's forces have organized elections in much of the Shia dominated south of Iraq. \"Religious seminaries run by al-Sadr's followers have proliferated,\" it adds. \"In the absence of a functioning public judicial system, Mohammed Fartousi, al-Sadr's agent in the Baghdad neighborhood al-Sadr City used his Hikma mosque to establish rudimentary personal status courts. Al-Sadr's wakils, or agents, distributed vests to traffic wardens emblazoned with the words 'hawza police'.\" Now with Muqtada al-Sadr declared an outlaw by the U.S., most of the Sadr organization's nation-building activities have been suspended. Al-Sadr has called for a jihad against the United States and its partners in occupation.

CAPSULE REVIEW - Iraq In Fragments: This documentary, an Academy Award nominee, was filmed over two years on the streets and fields of Iraq. It tells three stories of ordinary Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds as they live amid the indecipherable politics, fundamentalist religion, and tragic history of their country. Filmed in cinema verite fashion, it has a ragged reality that is confounding and moving. It gives no answers, but poses unsettling questions. Rating: three and a half stars out of five - Jay Stone [James Longley] lived and filmed in Iraq from 2003 to 2005 and gets about as close to the ground as you can get. He tells the story in three segments. In the first, we meet an 11-year-old boy named Muhammad. His father is dead, taken away by [Saddam Hussein]'s men for some political crime. He works at an auto repair shop in a crumbling Baghdad, where the owner alternately babies him and beats him. Muhammad has been in Grade 1 for five years and can only just write his name; his boss calls him \"brother of a whore,\" and worse, for his ignorance. Muhammad's story is, if you dwell on it, the story of Iraq's future. Its present comes in the conversations of the old men outside the cafe who ask, \"The humanitarian aid they talk about, where is it? Did you get some?\"