Another Day in Baghdad Lands at MAFF Market Forum at Malmo Arab Film Festival

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Another Day in Baghdad Lands at MAFF Market Forum at Malmo Arab Film Festival


Another Day in Baghdad by director Maysoon Pachachi will be part of the MAFF Market Forum within Malmo Arab Film Festival (October 8-13). The film has been selected to compete at the festival's Post-production Platform. This year the festival's market forum and industry platform will present monetary awards that are worth over $140,000 in total.

Previously, the film received the IWC Schaffhausen Script Prize from Dubai International Film Festival ($100,000), and a number of grants from SANAD, AFAC, and Doha Film Institute. Another Day in Baghdad also received a film fund from CNC and the Institut Français in France, and the British Film Institute in the UK.

In a typically mixed Baghdadi neighbourhood in 2006, a community of ordinary people try to live their everyday lives amidst the threat of unpredictable violence. At the heart of these intersecting stories we find Sara, a single mother and novelist, who regains her will to write after witnessing the forced exile of her Christian neighbour and best friend Sabiha. With the news of Saddam Hussein's sudden execution shortly before the New Year, Sara and her neighbours brace themselves for an uncertain future. Yet, like a miracle, each is able to sustain a fragile sense of hope.

Directed by Maysoon Pachachi and written by Irada Al Jabbouri, Another Day in Baghadad stars Darina Al Joundi, Zainab Al Ghanami, and Amed Hashimi. The film is produced by Oxymoron Films (UK)m Linked Productions (Kuwait), Les Contes Modernes (France), Neue Medlopolis Filmproduction (Germany), and MAD Solutions handles the film's distribution across the Arab world.

Maysoon Pachachi is a London-based filmmaker of Iraqi origin. She studied Philosophy at the University College London (BA Hons) and subsequently graduated from the London Film School. She worked for many years as a documentary and drama film editor in the UK. Since 1994, she has worked as an independent documentary film director. Most of her films are tappint into Middle Eastern themes. She has directed several films including, Iranian Journey
(2000), Return to the Land of Wonders (2004), and Our Feelings Took the Pictures: Open Shutters Iraq (2008), which received a Special Jury Mention at the Arab Film Festival Rotterdam.

In 2004, with her colleague, Kasim Abid, she co-founded Independent Film and Television College, a free-of-charge film-training center in Baghdad, where 17 student short documentaries have been selected in regional and international film festivals worldwide.