Heavy Metal in Baghdad

Acrassicauda, formed in 2001, was the only heavy metal band in Iraq. Under Saddam Hussein this music could not be played in public; the fall of the regime brought a brief hope, and the country’s slide into civil war closed it again. In the summer of 2006, at the height of the insurgency, Suroosh Alvi and Eddy Moretti went to Baghdad, found the band and stayed with them for three years. The documentary follows them through the impossibility of finding a rehearsal room, the fact that playing a show means risking your life, and finally their crossing into Syria as refugees. It begins as a music documentary and ends up somewhere else entirely, describing how a war makes ordinary life unworkable. A VICE production, it came out in 2007.