The First Movie (2009)

An innovative ‘magic realist’ documentary set in Iraq. Filmmaker Mark Cousins, who was brought up in a Northern Irish war zone, travels to Goptapa, a Kurdish-Iraqi village of just 700 people on a tributary of the Tigris river, and tries to make a dream film about a place that is normally only portrayed in current affairs programmes. He gives the kids cameras. They make little movies about war, love, a fish that goes to a magical place, and a chicken who debates justice. Despite the production being stopped twice by the Iraqi secret police, The First Movie is about wonder and the power of the imagination.