Title: Baghdad Diary
Director: Joseph Consentino, Sandra Consentino
Producer: Carl H. Kindahl (Exec), Joseph Consentino, Michael Winship (Co)
Screenwriter:
Cinema: Joseph Consentino, Craig White, Faadil Kadom
Editor: Sandra Consentino
Music: Daniel Krauz
Sound: David Smith
Year: 2007 (93 minutes)
Synopsis: Baghdad Diary is a documentary on the Iraq War and its aftermath told from two unique perspectives. Beginning in March 2003, Iraqi taxi driver Fadil Kadom’s video diary includes his family’s preparations for war, the days of bombs and missiles and Baghdad’s fall. Kadom’s camera unmasks the horrors of Saddam’s torture houses and mass graves, celebrates the return of religious freedom in Karbala, and reveals the mounting fear as Iraqi streets turn increasingly deadly with the horrific explosion of insurgent and sectarian violence. NBC News cameraman Craig White, embedded with the U.S. Army, brings the war into American living rooms. In nine dangerous trips to Iraq, White’s camera chronicles everything, from the disintegration of Iraqi civil society to the death of his colleague, correspondent David Bloom. Baghdad Diary is a cautionary tale of war’s human toll.
Review: I was prepared not to like this movie. I assumed it was going to be a propaganda film, not because I knew anything about the film, but simply because it was about the Iraq war. I was completely wrong.
Baghdad Diary is an excellent film and is the epitome of what a war documentary should be. Directors Joseph and Sandra Consentino did a great job of “documenting” the war as opposed to having an agenda and then crafting a film that promotes that agenda. They showed the good, the bad, and the ugly of war, all in equal measure.
The film gives two unusual perspectives of the war in Iraq. The first is filmed by Craig White, a cameraman for NBC News. The second is from the perspective of Fadil Kadom, a taxi driver in Baghdad. By giving an insider’s view – one from a cameraman embedded with U.S. troops, the other from a civilian living through the horror of war – we are provided with a view of the Iraq war that both unique and enlightening.
The Consentinos set out to make a documentary that gives a true and realistic view of the Iraq War from a unique perspective. They succeeded. Baghdad Diary is a very good film.
(4.0 out of 5.0)
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