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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Iraq in Fragments

EMAILPRINTTypecast Pictures / HBO Documentary Films

Iraq in Fragments reviews
84
8.0 User Score:

Movie Info

Genre(s): Documentary

Written by:

Directed by: James Longley

Release Date:
Theatrical: November 10, 2006

Running Time: 94 minutes, Color

Origin: USA / Iraq

Language(s): Kurdish / Arabic (with English subtitles)

Summary

RATING: Not Rated

Starring Mohammed Haithem, and Suleiman Mahmoud

Iraq in Fragments illuminates post-war Iraq in three acts, building a vivid picture of a country pulled in different directions by religion and ethnicity. Filmed in verité style, with no scripted narration, the film power fully explores the lives of ordinary Iraqis: people whose thoughts, beliefs, aspirations, and concerns are at once personal and illustrative of larger issues in Iraq today. (Typecast Pictures)

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Film Threat Phil Hall

Offers the Iraqis a rare chance to share their anger and their lives with the outside world. The resulting production is a raw and powerful film that demands to be seen.

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100

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

The calm poetry of the cinematography offsets the mess of the politics to stunning effect.

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100

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Oregon-born and Seattle-based director James Longley profiles three lives in his impressionistic portrait of Iraq's Sunni, Shia and Kurd communities.

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100

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Much as Emile de Antonio's neglected "In the Year of the Pig" (1968) may be the only major documentary about Vietnam that actually considers the Vietnamese, this film allows the people of Iraq to speak, and what they say is fascinating throughout.

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100

TV Guide Ken Fox

Tragically, the title of James Longley's beautifully shot 90-minute documentary refers to not only the state in which he found the Iraq during the two years he spent there shooting over 300 hours of footage, but the structure the violent factionalism that divides Iraqi Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds imposes on his film.

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100

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Langley's impeccably nonjudgmental camera knows exactly what details to record. Drawn from more than 300 hours of footage, the film's all too brief 94 minutes mesmerizes with its insight and, rarer still, its beauty.

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91

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

Nominated for an Oscar for best documentary feature, it's deeply humane and even more deeply unsettling, in a way that most documentaries about Iraq, which tend toward the polemic, never manage.

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91

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

The first third of Iraq In Fragments is so intense--a masterpiece in miniature, really--that audiences may not have much emotion left for the rest.

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90

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

A documentary of stunning immediacy and marvelous images.

90

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Seattle filmmaker James Longley's poetic essay on the plight of ordinary Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds trapped in a war simultaneously waged over their heads and in their faces stands head and shoulders above an overcrowded field of documentaries about the Iraq war.

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88

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Iraq in Fragments already stands up as a classic war documentary, in its unusual poetic form and by its extraordinary access to the lives of ordinary Iraqis.

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88

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

One of the year's finest documentaries, a remarkable example of the conjunction of a burningly topical and newsworthy subject with a brilliant filmmaker.

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80

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

A vivid, poetic evocation of life in post-invasion Iraq that works both as impressionistic collage and candid portraiture.

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80

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Alone among the works I've seen and read about Iraq in the last three years, Iraq in Fragments captures the tremendous complexity and variability of the country, offering neither facile hope nor fashionable despair.

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80

The New York Times A.O. Scott

From 300 hours of material, Mr. Longley has created a collage of images, sounds and characters, an intimate, partial portrait of an unraveling nation -- a portrait that gains power partly by virtue of its incompleteness.

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80

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Every moment of Longley's film is interesting, and the more we watch, the more clearly we realize that the film cannot solve anything for us.

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78

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

Offers more questions than answers. Even the Kurds, who seem the closest thing to a success story, long for a unified Iraq.

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75

Miami Herald Marta Barber

In addition to the interesting camera work, the documentary's undeniable appeal comes in how close Longley gets to the characters, who are all male.

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75

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Longley takes us through that country without a map; he's an artful, optimistic empiricist who believes what we see matters infinitely more than what we're told.

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75

San Francisco Chronicle G. Allen Johnson

In this last passage Longley shows a poetic, almost elegiacal artistry. After two years, he might not understand the Iraqi people fully, but they have won his heart and mind.

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75

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Visually arresting and deeply disheartening, James Longley's impressionistic documentary explores the pain of a shattered country by homing in on a few tiny shards.

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70

New York Magazine David Edelstein

In the end, the movie is more than the sum of its fragments. The montages are intense, the images ravishing. The movie is tactile. When you finally feel this place, you understand just how little you understand.

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70

Village Voice Melissa Anderson

Whether or not James Longley's boldly stylized reportage breaches public indifference, its enduring value is assured: When the war is long gone, this deft construction will persist in relevance, if not for what it says about the mess we once made, then as a model of canny cinematic construction.

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63

New York Post Kyle Smith

All three segments are heavy on blame-America speeches, which may be a fair snapshot of Iraqi opinion, but it's strange how fond Longley seems to be of Saddam Hussein.

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60

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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60

Empire Patrick Peters

Shot over three years, this is one of the more considered and insightful Iraqi documentaries - although some may find its stylistic contrasts a little self-conscious and distracting.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 8.0 (out of 10) based on 5 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

[Anonymous] gave it a7:
Great footage, but the film is just as fragmented as its chaotic and tragic subject.

Rob gave it an8:
Insightful and beautiful in its way.

[Anonymous] gave it a10:
Best documentary film of all time by all standards.

[Anonymous] gave it a10:
A mezmerizing achievement.

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