Voices from Iraq
'Voices from Iraq' was shot in 1993 – two years after the first Gulf War. Iraq was a police state and, like all journalists, we were accompanied by a government minder when we were filming. The many stringers stationed in Baghdad tended to report only on the stand-off between Saddam Hussein's government and the United Nations weapons inspectorate. I wanted to make something different and more intimate - a record of the impact of the war and economic sanctions on the lives of Iraqi civilians. I persuaded the Ministry of Information to allow me to film with people I knew from contacts outside Iraq. This access ultimately meant the film was compromised: I had intended to include 'anti-government' voices from the Iraqi community in the UK but it became obvious that this could be dangerous for the other participants. As it was, one of the families we spent time with in Baghdad was visited every day for 6 weeks by the secret police, asking why I had chosen to film them. I was glad to discover, years after the film was made, that all the participants stood by what they had said on camera.
— Miriam Ryle
