The First Movie

Documentary • NR • Directed by: Mark Cousins • 76 minutes

The First Movie is a tribute to the imaginative resilience of children. When filmmaker Mark Cousins and his crew travel to Goptapa, a small Kurdish Village in Northern Iraq devastated by Saddam Hussein's regime, they discover children who have known nothing but war their entire lives and have never experienced the magic of cinema. The filmmakers sew together a movie screen from old sheets and set up a projector, instantly creating a movie theater that plays children's classics in the village center. But the real magic happens when the children receive camcorders and create their own movies filled with a child's wonder and boundless imagination. The resulting films are the true gift of The First Movie; they are tickets to see a different Iraq, and the world, through a child's transformative eyes. The film conveys the power of cinema to enchant and inspire, even amidst the bloodshed of war.