Iraq’s Invisible Beauty review – moving but scrappy look at a photographer and his flailing home country
As a tribute to pre-'80s Iraq, Sahim Omar Kalifa's doc is a touching affair, but it's hampered by dry exposition and terrible narration
Completed shortly after its subject’s death and exploring Iraq’s relatively recent, yet culturally distant, past of hope and vibrancy, there is an aching poignancy at the heart of Iraq’s Invisible Beauty, the latest documentary from Belgian-Kurdish filmmaker Sahim Omar Kalifa. Following the life of Iraq’s “father of photography” Latif Al Ani, Kalifa and Latif tour through the locations of Latif’s photos, mostly taken between the ‘50s and the ‘70s, to see how much Iraq has changed and declined over the war-torn last 40 years, making for an affecting, if flawed in execution, journey.
The road trip angle is Iraq’s Invisible Beauty’s strongest element by far. The breadth and variety of this truly ancient country, from rugged mountains to millennia-old monuments to bombed-out former warzones to a block of flats in the city of Erbil that just looks like a newbuild in Vauxhall, is consistently fascinating. It’s also sweet to see the relationship between Kalifa and Latif blossoming as Kalifa drives them around – a moment in which Kalifa puts his arm round the 86-year-old Latif to walk him to car is very touching.
Outside of this, though, you might find your interest waning at points. The actual study of Latif’s photos themselves is not pulled off with much panache, likely to appeal only to those with a deeper pre-existing interest in the subject matter, not helped by a really rather crummy voiceover. Over the less moments, Kalifa puts a first-person, English-language narration of Latif’s life story (not from Latif himself, mind you), and it’s jarring every time it pops up.
As a tribute to a country that has become a shadow of its former self, as well as in its less affected explorations of Latif’s life (it’s brushed past quickly, but the poor man outlived his wife and both his sons), Iraq’s Invisible Beauty is undeniably moving; it’s just a shame it seems so intent on tripping itself up.
Iraq's Invisible Beauty is released in UK cinemas on 21 July.
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