The first episode of a documentary Web series, Hometown Baghdad, opens on the University of Baghdad campus. Adel, a student in the college of engineering, takes the viewer on a two-minute tour of the macabre: a missile attack, students maimed or murdered, a dean assassinated.
The ongoing series follows the lives of students at the university as they struggle to study for their degrees and debate whether to leave the country. “I think it’s dangerous to go to school and college over here,” Adel says. “There are some groups that are targeting professors and doctors and even students.”
The subjects and crew risk their lives to film these documentaries—each less than three minutes long—because they want to “show the world what life is like when your hometown is a war-zone,” according to the project’s Web site. Participants mostly speak in English so as to reach the widest possible audience.
In the latest episode, released Monday, Ausama, a student in the medical school, prepares for exams and discusses his dream to leave the country after graduating and, eventually, return. He and other students talk about how impossible it is to have a normal college life in Baghdad.
The series is a collaboration between a group of Iraqi filmmakers and a production company based in New York, Chat the Planet. New episodes are released Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.—Sierra Millman
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