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The Motherfucker’s Birthday

Saif Alsaegh
USA
7'

Through dancing, the film shows the evil of dictators and the horror people endure under powerful political leaders. Saddam dances, Bush dances, so what’s left for the Iraqi people except to join in?

Recently, signs of a cinematic revival have begun to emerge from Iraq: a symptom of a society that, after such a bloody end and beginning of the century, is starting to process its traumas through artmaking. It’s remarkable that two films about the Saddam regime appear in a single year, specifically about one particular facet of the cult of personality practiced by the Ba’athist dictator. Hasan Hadi’s feature The President’s Cake and Saif Alsaegh’s THE MOTHERFUCKER’S BIRTHDAY (2024) by Saif Alsaegh both address the pharaonic birthdays organised for Saddam Hussein. In a confined space (and so, with a certain puissance), Alsaegh juxtaposes images of mass celebrations with testimonies about the oppression of dissidents, creating a contrast between the propagandistic spectacle – the (macabre) dances and orchestrated festivities – and the brutal reality of torture and repression. (Flavia Dima)

Saturday, September 27, 18:00

Cinema Elvire Popesco
Tickets

Saif Alsaegh

Saif Alsaegh is a United States-based filmmaker from Baghdad. Much of Saif’s work deals with the contrast between the landscape of his youth in Baghdad growing up as part of the indigenous Chaldean minority in the nineties and early 2000s, and the U.S. landscape where he currently lives. His films have screened in festivals and venues including Cinéma du Réel, Kurzfilm Hamburg, Kassel Dokfest, Aesthetica Short Film Festival, Media City Film Festival, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and The Gene Siskel Film Center. Alsaegh’s films are distributed by Video Data Bank. His work has been supported by fellowships and residencies including the Flaherty, Ucross and Yaddo.

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