Flavours of Iraq Film Recounts 80s Baghdad Childhood

The animated film "Flavours of Iraq," co-directed by Léonard Cohen and French-Iraqi journalist Feurat Alani, offers a vivid portrayal of Alani's childhood experiences in 1980s Paris and Baghdad. The film utilizes a stylized, expressionist animation technique, employing silhouette cutouts to represent the persistent nature of memory. The narrative is driven by Alani's first-person account, voiced by actor Malik Zidi, and is framed by his father's funeral.

Alani's father was a prominent leftist Iraqi exile who fled his home country due to his opposition to Saddam Hussein's regime. The film delves into Alani's fractured family experience as the son of this exile. The funeral brings together members of Iraq's 1970s socialist diaspora, whose anecdotes trigger Alani's own recollections. These include his return visits to Iraq at the close of the 1980s, where he encountered sensory details of Baghdad and Falluja, such as the taste of ice-cream and the scent of hair oil.

The film's title, translated from the French "Le Parfum d’Irak," is noted as being slightly less evocative than a more direct translation like "the perfume of Iraq." Despite this, the animation is described as powerful and robust, effectively conveying the emotional weight of Alani's personal history and his connection to his Iraqi heritage.