Baghdad’s gritty reality and the ancient myths lingering among its ruins intertwine with the childlike imagination of Iraq’s future young generation in Mohamed Jabarah Al-Daradji’s documentarist drama. Its loose narrative unfolds in the scarred streets of the capital where old legends filter through the dust and debris of modern survival. Chum-Chum (Youssef Husham Al-Thahabi) is one of the many homeless kids roaming the rough topography shaped by war. Part of the military conflict’s many traces are the young protagonist and his scattered group of friends for whom the armed fight has been replaced by their everyday fight for food, shelter, safety, and fleeting notions of joy.
One of the latter is an animated fantasy kids series which the 9-year-old protagonist watches on an old VHS player. In his grief-stricken mind, the series’s simple colorful images mix with bits and pieces from Arabic mythology, convincing him the Tigris conceals a portal to the Sumerian underworld Irkalla. The city’s cracked asphalt and bullet-pocked walls shimmer with the ghostly hints of mythological figures who become hopeful heroes in Chum-Chum’s wishful thinking: If he can only find the gate to Irkalla, he believes he could bring his dead parents back to life. It’s an idea both touching and tragic. Its absurd naivety is in itself a rare relic of childlike dreaming in a world that has no room for them.
Chum-Chum’s closest friend is Moody (Hussein Raad Zuwayr), an aggressive thirteen-year-old teetering on the edge of militia recruitment. Torn between the seductive pull of the myth inspired by the Epic of Gilgamesh and the brutal reality surrounding him, the Chum-Chum drifts towards unseen dangers. Just as its child character, the narrative wanders aimlessly between allegory, fairytale, and realism. The crumbling cityscape becomes a protagonist on its own, with abandoned buildings and the rugged riverbanks offering risky playgrounds, age-old secrets, and hiding places from a world molded by trauma. Handheld shots, ambient noise, and unvarnished street textures give the visuals a ridged authenticity.
Magical elements such as chalk drawings coming to life are clearly marked as fantasy, but they nevertheless imbue the harsh setting with glimpses of hope. The camera softens the dismal scenario with scenes of lyrical suspension, lingering on the shimmer of the river and turning murky water into a liquid sky. Unfortunately, newcomers Al-Thahabi and Zuwayr only occasionally achieve lifelike interactions. Their silence is often more eloquent than their dialogue, the latter suffering from uneven line readings and rehearsed stiffness. Telegraphed gestures break the fragile illusion of emotional veracity. Instead of deepening the tension between reality and fable, this inconsistency draws attention to the mechanics of acting, sacrificing genuine emotion for awkward melodrama.
In its fragmented form the meandering plot strangely mirrors the broken shapes of its setting. Too many characters and storylines overwhelm the brittle narrative framework, wavering undecided between romanticized poverty, bleak fatalism, and uncomfortable tropes of premature manhood. Enticing themes, such as the power of storytelling to heal or to mislead, are never sufficiently explored. The young male characters’ casual chauvinism is normalized by a story crucially lacking in female representation. This conspicuous absence involuntarily points toward the evasion of ideological and political issues. They vague suggestions beneath the surface of a tale that too often uses realism as an aesthetic device to bolster sentimental fiction.
- OT: Irkalla Hulm Jijiljamish
- Director: Mohamed Jabarah Al-Daradji
- Year: 2025
