Our feelings took the pictures

"This ultimately hopeful film documents a remarkable photography project, Open Shutters Iraq. It shows how traumatised, silenced people can sometimes reclaim their voices from the ruins of their 'un-made' world. For a month, a group of women from five cities in Iraq live and work together in a traditional courtyard house in Damascus. Everyday they are out on the streets of the Old City practising their photography. Back in the house, they draw and present 'life maps' to each other, telling their stories with a rare honesty, with humour and grief and anger. They unearth memories, buried in the course of just trying to survive 30 years of war, dictatorship and sanctions. The experience transforms them and, back in Iraq, they shoot hundreds of photographs, each imbued with the sharp truth of lived experience."--Container.