Topic: In the Valley of Elah

Award-winning filmmakers take on Iraq, Afghanistan wars

By Christine Anne Piesyk | September 1, 2007 |

Redacted and In the Valley of Elah.

Two tough films. Maybe a tough sell. But North American filmmakers are tackling heavy issues involving Iraq and Afghanistan, and these two films, premiering at the Venice Film Festival this weekend, are overwhelming viewers with grim realities drawn from headlines and guaranteed to spark controversy when released in the USA. In all, eight films on Iraq by American filmmakers are due out in the next six months; whether or when they will get screen time in Clarksville remains to be seen.

Master filmmaker Brian De Palma’s Redacted, a film about the rape of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the 2006 murder of her family by a U.S. soldier reportedly “stunned” audiences with blatant imagery and almost inconceivable grief and horror. It is based on a true story of Abeer Qazim Hazma al-Jabani in a town south of Baghdad, who was killed and burned by U.S. troops. Patrick Carroll (pictured, left) plays the character Reno Flake in Redacted. «Read the rest of this article»

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