The following is a new film review by Laura Fokkena posted at PopPolitics Magazine.

Chicago-based filmmaker Usama Alshaibi in a scene from the documentary “Nice Bombs.”

In January of 2004, just as dawn was breaking, Chicago-based filmmaker Usama Alshaibi bribed the guards on Iraq’s Jordanian border and drove back into the country he hadn’t seen in 24 years. He brought along his American-born wife, Kristie, and a video camera.

The resulting documentary, “Nice Bombs: My Journey Back to Iraq,” was the winner of the Chicago Underground Film Festival’s 2006 award for best documentary feature and the Tribeca All-Access Creative Promise Award for a documentary feature. It has since screened in New York City, Santa Fe and Milwaukee. It will premiere on the Sundance Channel Wednesday, March 19 at 6:30 p.m. EST. (Watch the trailer.)

Alshaibi was born in Baghdad in 1969. When he was 11 years old, his mother, fearing the escalating war with Iran, hid the family’s gold in his little brother’s diaper and slipped her four children over Iraq’s southern border with Kuwait, telling the guards they were taking a short trip out of the country for medical reasons. The ruse worked and, after a few years of bouncing around various Arab countries, the family finally landed in Iowa City.

In 1991, Alshaibi had just turned 21 and was studying art at The University of Iowa when the first Gulf War broke out. He received a letter from the INS informing him that his residency had expired and he was to be deported back to Iraq. He also got another letter, this one from Baghdad, drafting him into the Iraqi army. He applied, successfully, for political asylum in the United States, and eventually became a naturalized citizen.

With the horror of war finally behind him, why go back? His own mother, after all, said she’d never forgive him if he returned.

“For so long there was this part of my past that was invisible,” Alshaibi explains, “and I missed it.”

But he also blames Studs Terkel.

Continue reading “Back to Baghdad: ‘Nice Bombs’ Targets Life During Wartime”