Iraq, France

Producer: Marc Bordure

Production Company: Agat Films & Cie

 

Project Logline:

 

Gazi is nearing 60. A hero of the Kurdish resistance, now a businessman, he is at the head of a huge fortune. Thanks to oil, the country has become incredibly rich overnight. Corruption is rife. Gazi has allowed himself to lose all his bearings. On one of his sites, because of poor safety rules, a worker dies. The man’s brother wants revenge. But Gazi seems to have lost all sense of justice. In this new El Dorado, a man’s life matters less than a fistful of dollars. Blinded by his own power, Ghazi continues to scheme to increase his wealth, juggling with bags of cash, losing his soul and spending his nights with girls of easy virtue, until his path crosses that of an old friend that he knew in the resistance, Nermin. They no longer belong to the same world: she has held onto her ideals and Ghazi suddenly perceives the scale of his own decadence … but is there still time for him to turn back and recover a semblance of conscience and lucidity?

 

Hiner Saleem was born on March 9, 1964, in Aqrah in Iraqi Kurdistan. Hiner Saleem had already started shooting scenes for his first film, Un bout de frontière, when he was interrupted by bombardments and prevented from completing the film. Gillo Pontecorvo, however, decided to present this footage in 1992 at the Venice film festival as an “unfinished work,”which in turn allowed Mr. Saleem to raise the financing he needed for hisnext film, Vive la mariée... et la liberation du Kurdistan (Kebab Connection). He then made a drama with autobiographical underpinnings, Passeurs de rêves (Beyond our Dreams), followed by Vodka Lemon: awarded Best Film (Controcorrente) at the Venice Film Festival 2005. His feature film, Kilomètre zéro, was part of the official selection at the Cannes Film Festival. This was followed in 2007 by the release of Dol ou la vallée des tambours. He directed Michel Piccoli in the film Les Toîts de Paris (Beneath the rooftops of Paris - Best actor prize, Locarno International Film Festival), and in 2011 shot Si tu meurs, je te tue (If you die, I’ll kill you).