Jiyan

'Kill Saddam!' sings a crazed old man, in writer/director Rosebiani's cinematically unsophisticated but delicate and heartfelt fictional tribute to the Kurdish people. The cursory story concerns Diyari, a visiting US-domiciled Kurd (Galalî), and his effort to build an orphanage in Halabja, the town attacked in 1988 in Saddam's chemical/biological Anfal campaign that killed 5,000 men, women and children. Not that the old man is the only evidence Diyari finds of the aftermath of the tragedy. The maimed, blind, maddened, abandoned, orphaned and dying are everywhere. Though Rosebiani's gives expression to this reality, his main purpose is to propagandise hope and progressiveness, and pay tribute to the Kurds' spirit and culture. The film's primitivism and didacticism will limit its audience, but its utter sincerity and directness can be very moving.