Letters from Baghdad PG
This film is F-Rated
Celebrating the empowerment of women in the film industry. Read more >
‘Oil is the trouble of course. Detestable stuff.’ The tangled story of modern Iraq began 100 years ago. Gertrude Bell was at the centre of it all: a controversial, visionary and fearless adventurer. Described by T.E Lawrence as ‘Not really like a woman, you know?’ Letters from Baghdad tells her extraordinary and dramatic story, narrated by Tilda Swinton in Bell’s own words. The most powerful woman in the British Empire in her day, she shaped the modern Middle East in ways that still reverberate. A spy, explorer and political powerhouse, Bell travelled widely in Arabia before being recruited by British military intelligence to help draw the borders of Iraq after WWI. But why has she been written out of history? Using never-seen-before footage of the region, the film chronicles Bell’s extraordinary journey into both the uncharted Arabian desert and the inner sanctum of British male colonial power. It is a unique look at both a remarkable woman and the jumbled history of Iraq that takes us into a past that is eerily current.
Gallery 3 images
- Director
- Sabine Krayenbühl, Zeva Oelbaum
- Country
- France, UK, USA
- Duration
- 95 mins
- Cast
- Adam Astill, Ammar Haj Ahmad, Tonm Chadbon
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