HANGING GARDENS

Taha and his younger brother As'ad (Wissam Diyaa) scrape a living searching for discarded metals and plastics at the vast, stinking Baghdad rubbish dump ironically named for the legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The dump section reserved for refuse from the US military regularly yields girlie magazines, which As'ad, who is only twelve, with a mix of innocence and the toughness he has needed to survive, sells off page-by-page on the sly. As'ad hits the jackpot - and causes a huge rift with his older brother - when he brings home a discarded rubber doll. He cleans up the intimacy toy tenderly, then puts it to work in a makeshift brothel. Working with a local cast, director Ahmed Yassin Al-Daradji tells an intimate, affectionate and often humorous story of kids growing up, making some hard points about the corrosive effects of poverty and consumerism along the way. This film is supported by the Red Sea Fund.