by Sawat Ghalib from Baghdad and Sulaymaniah
Baghdad´s Kiss

Sawat Ghalib was born in Diwaniyah in 1964. He grew up in Baghdad, though his family is originally from the city of Sulaymaniyah in Kurdistan. He left Iraq for Germany in 1984 as a refugee and was given German citizenship. Sawat worked for various German media outlets covering issues in Iraq and Kurdistan. Since 1992, he has been producing features and reports for German TV. The last short film, about a ‘kiss in Baghdad’, is funded by Spotlight Iraq.
 
Sawat completed high school in Iraq and obtained a diploma in Business Marketing in Germany. He also attended script-writing courses in Berlin. His topics of interest include social conflicts and freedom of expression in all aspects of human life, including love and religion.

The film was inspired by a personal story involving him and his girlfriend when he went back to Kurdistan. Each time he wanted to kiss her, something would happen or somebody would appear and interrupt. In Baghdad, it was no better. Sawat thought it might be, considering his past experiences living in the city in the 1980s. Now, he says, it seems like a black abaya covers the city. A friend of Sawat told him that nothing is necessarily off limits in Baghdad–sex, drinking, partying–but it must always be in private, never in public.
 
Sawat says that Baghdad used to be better in the past. It was more liberal, a cosmopolitan capital where people came from all backgrounds, where women were free to wear the veil or not, and where mixing of the sexes was acceptable. Now, it seems that there is almost a gender apartheid in place. For Sawat who lived most of his youth and adult live in Europe, kissing and holding hands with a girl is a normal practice. In Iraq, however, this is problematic.
The film is simple and short with a sharp message: much can be done in secret, but not in public. The film, centred around two young lovers, is about the desire for a moment of freedom to simply kiss the person with whom you are in love.
The boy sells gas bottles. One day, he decides to steal the truck from his boss and take his girlfriend to the outskirts of Bagdad where they can have a moment alone. He takes her to a neighbourhood, and each time he tries to kiss her, something happens (for example, an electricity supplier explodes). 
 
At the end, they both board a motorcycle, and the girl throws away her chador, a black cloth that covers entire a woman’s body. Under it, everyone has a story.
 
The film is about 6 minutes. It is now completed and has been entered for participation in to several film festivals. Sawat hopes to present this to the public in near future.