Escaping Saddam: A story of overcoming intergenerational trauma | Witness Documentary

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When filmmaker Wiam Al-Zabari was a young boy, he fled with his mother and siblings in the middle of the night to escape Iraq in the mid-1990s. His ex-diplomat father had left Baghdad months earlier and was waiting for them to join him in the Netherlands where he sought asylum. Ever since, no one in the family has talked about their escape and why they had to leave Iraq. Now that Wiam is a father with young children, he reflects on his own traumatic childhood and resentment towards his dad, wondering why he abandoned his family when they most needed him. He hopes that by encouraging his family to finally talk about what happened, he can break the cycle of intergenerational trauma. My Father, Nour and I is a documentary film by Wiam Al-Zabari.