I LIVE HERE AND BREATHE THERE

This film is a personal and subjective documentary through images and sound, inspired by non-verbal cinema genera, with no script, no dialogue, no narration, or interviews.
It's following the diverse and parallel daily life on two streets in two very different and far apart cities. One at ‘Alghadeer’ street in Baghdad, and the other at ‘Huxley Gardens’ in London, where I have lived the larger portion of my life".
The film is not a straight conventional story, it's a multi-layered structure with different themes, ideas, and challenges throughout the film. made up of a series of scenes of daily activities on both streets, Shot over many years (almost 12) looking out the window, always from the same spot. It follows people and events in real-time, capturing their life and activities as it unfolds, without interview, commentary, or dialogue.
The power of place of these two streets reflects the face of the two large cities, of which they are a part. Every street has its own society, mood, structure, activities, neighborhoods, cultural identity, tempo, noises, movement, energy, speech, silence, and mysteries. And each presents a mixture of people of different ages.
The reason that I selected these two streets is that they are both part of my personal life, part of my psychological and cultural formation, part of my old and new memories, and part of my spirit. I was born in Baghdad, and grew up there, at the same time, I have lived in London for almost 40 years now.
Sense of place is one of the themes I tackled in my film with a question, what makes places meaningful to us or to anybody else?