Inspired by the examples of Cambodia and South Africa, where the uncovering of truths about previous atrocities led to a process of reconciliation, the Iraqi Kurdish filmmaker Jano Rosebiani returned home just before the outbreak of war in 2003. A few years earlier he had made the only fiction film about Saddam Hussein's 1985 chemical attacks on Kurds in Halabja. The goal of his present film was to document the discovery of mass grave sites, over 200 of which have been uncovered in the past year, a number now cited as the largest in the world. Apart from his use of chemical and biological weapons, Saddam commonly engaged in the mass burial of civilians, many of whom were interred while they were still alive. With the goal of setting the record straight about the collective suffering of Iraqis, Rosebiani interviews coalition officials, human rights representatives, and survivors. He notes, "I believe the scar that has been inflicted on the people of Iraq is the common denominator that should bond all Iraqis to work together to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again."

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Jano Rosebiani was born and raised in Zakho, in the Southern region of Kurdistan. Under Saddam's tyrannical regime, Rosebiani's family joined the Kurdish mass uprising and took to the mountains, later becoming refugees in the U.S. During his college years, he made experimental videos for public access television. His feature debut, Dance of the Pendulum (1995), is a low-budget comedy parodying sexploitation in Hollywood. Jiyan (Life, 2002), his first Kurdish film shot in the U.S./U.K. protected region of Southern Kurdistan, depicts life in Halabja following Saddam's chemical and biological attack that took 5,000 lives. Jiyan toured festivals worldwide, winning the Special Jury Award, New Director's Showcase, at the 2002 Seattle International Film Festival, the Best Film "Man and his Environment" Award at Portugal's 2002 International Film Festival, Festroia. It also received the 2002 In The Spirit of Freedom Award, In Memory of Wim Van Leer, at the 19th Jerusalem Film Festival.

The tragedy left behind by Saddam, Chemical Ali, and their cronies has left a scar that will probably never fully heal. However, as it has been the case in other troubled parts of the world, such as South Africa and Cambodia, I hope that finding the truth and spreading the facts and figures about the collective suffering of innocent Iraqis under the previous regime will bring the people closer and make way for reconciliation that will in turn lead to a truly democratic and terror-free Iraq, where no one group overshadows another but all live equally side by side in peace and harmony under a federal democratic system that is satisfactory to all. This idea of truth and reconciliation for the people of Iraq was the driving force for me in making this documentary. Looking back at the past made me realize that Iraqis are not alone in their suffering. The previous century may fittingly be labeled as the century of terror and genocides. Among them, the Armenian genocide in Turkey, Hitler's genocide of the Jews and the Gypsies, the Khmer Rouge's in Cambodia, the Mayan massacre in Guatemala, the massacres in Congo, Rwanda, Serbia, etc. We may conclude that the past century was truly the era of tyrants--Hitler, Idi Amin, Pinochet, Milosevic, Saddam, and so many more. As to the misinformed in the world, I hope this film will set the record straight for once by bringing to light the extent of Saddam's monstrosity, that such a beast was no one's friend nor a hero, not in Iraq, nor in anywhere else in the world. Consequently, I hope that this film will move the common man and woman to think again in their assessment of Saddam, and instead begin to sympathize with the suffering Iraqis. It may be too early to estimate the number of gravesites or the number of the dead as new sites are being discovered every day. One thing for sure, had Saddam not been defeated, a great majority of Iraqi population would have ended up in these mass graves at some point in time. The mass graves that are already dotting Iraq's landscape from Musil to Basra. I believe the scar that is inflicted upon the people is the common denominator that should bond Iraqis to work together to prevent such a tragedy to ever come to pass again.