Sahim Omar Kalifa’s short Land of the Heroes has been selected for the Tampere Film Festival (7-11 March). The selection is just the latest of 55 official invitations the film has received, including festivals such as the Worldwide Short Film Festival Toronto, the I’ve Seen Films Festival in Milan and the Curta Cinema Festival in Rio de Janeiro.
The short has also won numerous awards along the way, most notably the awards for Best Film and Best Cinematography at the South Korean Busan International Short Film Festival, and the Generation Kplus International Jury Award at the Berlin International Film Festival. Last December, the film grabbed its ninth award, the Muhr Arab Second Jury Prize, worth $10,000, at the Dubai International Film Festival.
Land of the Heroes is set in 1988 post-war Iraq. In the movie, Kalifa, himself of Iraqi Kurdish descent, tells the story of Dileer and his sister, who want to watch cartoons on television, but are finding it more difficult than they expected. The short was produced by Hendrik Verthé and Kobe Van Steenberghe for a team productions (Injury Time, How to enrich yourself by driving women into emotional and financial bankruptcy).