Once upon a time there were two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, which fed and made fertile a land shaped like a crescent moon. Here was the home of ancient civilizations where writing was invented and urban society developed.

That legendary land is today the place where the history of Ancient Mesopotamia has been buried.

The list of wonders mankind has lost is endless. The wanton destruction perpetrated by ISIS is indefensible and cannot be in anyway justified as part of its struggle against idolatry.

But plunder in this land has been carried out by other regimes as well, aided in their predatory action by many-sided complicity.

As a consequence of the irreparable loss of these vestiges – sculptures, cuneiform tablets, cylindrical seals – it has become increasingly difficult for the present-day peoples of Mesopotamia to conserve their links with the land where they live because the historical references of the world they are heirs to have vanished.

And what remains is a black hole of social bewilderment and anguish.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR: Alberto Castellani was born and lives in Venice, is a journal contributor and has been active for thirty years in the field of the Audio-visual Communication.

He is a correspondent of the Vatican Radio, TV 2000 Rome and of the Christian Information Center in Jerusalem; he makes reports for the International Magazine RAI “Alpe Adria” and for the RAI office in Trieste.

He owns and manages MediaVenice – Comunicazione e Immagine.

He started his film activity at the end of the Seventies and gained considerable recognitions.