TRT: 16:55

The American occupation of Iraq has had catastrophic costs for the Iraqi people, destroying their everyday lives, their security and their future. The UNHCR and other refugee agencies estimate that 5 million Iraqis have been displaced by the war. More than 1.3 million Iraqis are now living in Syria, many of them in neighborhoods of Damascus.

The filmmakers journeyed to Damascus in 2008 to collect interviews with some of these Iraqi refugees, returning six months later for followup interviews. This is the first in a series of short films introducing audiences to the individual stories of Iraqi families broken by the war.

“Iraqi Refugee: Ikhlass” focuses on one Iraqi survivor and her two young daughters. Ihklass recounts the tragic story that determined her fate as a refugee, and speaks out against the American occupiers who destroyed her world. This surviving small family continues to seek resettlement in a third country.