Mosul

Mosul, 2017. A young policeman, Kawa, is pinned down in a raid, and the unit that pulls him out is an unusual one: the Nineveh SWAT team. They operate on their own, take orders from nobody, and use captured weapons and money by their own rules. Kawa joins them, and nobody tells him where they are going. All that is learned before the end is that everyone here has lost someone in this city. The film does not explain the war; it follows one unit street by street through a single day. There are no Americans, no advisers, nobody looking in from outside. It also declines to spell out why each man fights; the objective revealed at the very end carries the whole weight of the picture. Matthew Michael Carnahan wrote and directed. It was shot entirely in Iraqi Arabic. Suhail Dabbach plays Major Jasem and Adam Bessa plays Kawa, with Mauro Fiore as cinematographer. Anthony and Joe Russo are among the producers. The source is Luke Mogelson's article in the New Yorker. It screened at Venice in September 2019 and was distributed by Netflix. Who it is for: anyone who likes front-line films and war stories without a Western point of view. Who it is not for: anyone who wants context. The film gives no political background, most of the characters remain names, and the violence is nearly continuous.