Our River...Our Sky

Sara is a single mother and novelist shocked into silence at a time of extreme sectarian violence and nightly curfews in Baghdad. She and her neighbors let us into their everyday lives, as they struggle to resist the fragmentation of their world and renew a fragile sense of hope and belief in a better future.

About the Filmmaker

Maysoon Pachachi is a London-based filmmaker of Iraqi origin. She was educated in Iraq, the US and the UK. She studied philosophy at University College London (BA Hons) and then filmmaking at the London Film School. She was for many years a documentary and drama film editor in the UK and has worked since 1994 as an independent documentary film director, largely making films in and about the Middle East. Maysoon has also taught film directing and editing in Britain and Palestine (Jerusalem, Gaza, and at Birzeit University). In 2004, with her colleague, Iraqi filmmaker Kasim Abid, she co-founded INDEPENDENT FILM & TELEVISION COLLEGE, a free film training center in Baghdad, whose students have produced seventeen short documentary films which have shown at festivals and screenings internationally and within Iraq at a traveling festival.

This film was originally included at the Arab Film Festival 2021 in San Francsico, presented by the Arab Film and Media Institute.