Layth Abdulamir


Layth Abdulamir is an Iraqi-French filmmaker born on 24 October 1957 in Iraq. He has been studying film in Paris, France, from 1977 to 1980, and in Kiev from 1980 to 1986. Since 1994, he has made several documentary films for various TV channels in France and for Dubai TV in the United Arab Emirates.

Biography

Layth Abdulamir left Iraq in 1977 to study film at the Sorbonne in Paris, moved to the Soviet Union in 1980, and obtained his MA Degree in 1985 at the Kiev National I. K. Karpenko-Kary Theatre, Cinema and Television University, where he is in the final stages of finishing his doctorate. He has won a number of International Awards for his films.
Layth Abdulamir has become prominent following the emergence of a new generation of Iraqi filmmakers, in exile or still working in the country, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, a period of cultural and artistic achievements which unveiled other notable names including Abbas Fahdel, Hayder Mousa Daffar, and Zahavi Sanjavi.
In 2005, after 28 years of absence, Layth Abdulamir returned for the first time to Iraq to make the documentary, but he felt like a complete stranger in the country where he was born and the making of the film was rather difficult in a land still plagued by the harsh realities and consequences of the American military post-occupation. In an interview with AlloCiné, the director explained: "Most of the time I had to ‘steal’ images of reality, I was never able to install myself in a shot, in an interview, and thereby benefit from the time necessary for this type of operation." He added: "Iraqi identity was broken, everyone retreated to hide behind his community, his religion, his religious allegiance."
As of 2014, Layth Abdulamir began working as a film critic for a number of Arabic language newspapers, and also as a Master class instructor.

Work

As a director and screenwriter, Layth Abdulamir made the following films, among others, in a carrer spanning more than three decades: The Cradle in the former Soviet Union; Yemen, a Time for the Sacred, a French-Belgian co-production; a quintet of documentaries for Dubai Television, in the United Arab Emirates, from 1999 to 2004; , an ethnological reading of post-occupation realities in Iraq; The Executioner's Tear, a condemnation of barbarian executions in Egypt that was co-produced by French public television channel France 3 and Orok Films.
With the exception of a couple of early short fictional films, Layth Abdulamir makes a full-time living as a documentary filmmaker, building a field of specialization in topics related to the Arab world and filming mainly in the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Egypt, and Irak.

Awards and nominations