Iraq’s Oscar© 2022 Entry for Best International Feature: ‘Europa’ by Haider Rashid

Debuting at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival in the Directors’ Fortnight section, and winner for Best Actor and Best Director at the just-wrapped Red Sea International Film Festival.

Sydney Levine
SydneysBuzz The Blog
10 min readDec 13, 2021

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‘Europa’ depicts events taking place on the Balkan Route of Migration. The youth Kamal has fled Iraq to try to enter “Fortress Europe”. At the Turkish-Bulgarian border, local mercenaries are ruthlessly hunting down migrants. Alone in the forest, Kamal has three days to escape.

Europa is the fifth feature film by Iraqi director Haider Rashid who has won awards at the Venice International Film Festival, Dubai International Film Festival and Italy’s Nastri d’Argento.While in post-production, the film won the top prize at Cairo Film Connection and Milano Film Network.

I caught the film at the just finished Red Sea Film Festival where it received a standing ovation and was followed by a Q&A.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

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Sydney’s 40+ years in international film business include exec positions in acquisitions, twice selling FilmFinders, the 1st film database, teaching & writing.