With moving intimacy, Baghdad High affords an unprecedented glimpse into the lives of ordinary Iraqis attempting to lead ordinary lives in extraordinary circumstances. The film resulted from a terrific idea born in the minds of two Western journalist/filmmakers who had already worked in that country. Four high school seniors were given basic instruction in filmmaking, and then each was given a digital camera to record his life for the next year. Their school was in a middle-class, religiously mixed district, and they'd been raised by parents who saw themselves as Iraqis first and only secondarily as members of a particular religion or sect. What's fascinating about the film that resulted is how very familiar and ordinary these kids are-they're not really all that different from your own teenagers or the kids you went to school with. The kids of Baghdad High also open us up to a very different sense of life in Iraq than what we've been seeing on the nightly news for five years. They permit us to appreciate that Iraq isn't populated merely by statistics, but the boys still have to deal with what one of them calls "no good news" every day of their lives. Though they frequently express their fear and hatred toward the perpetrators of the horrendous acts of violence that have been tearing their tortured nation apart, the solid friendship of the four boys gives some occasion for hope. But by the end of the film, two of the boys, their families, and half the students at their school have had to flee, reflecting the similar fates of more than four million refugees the cataclysmic war has dispersed throughout Iraq and into neighboring countries.

Ivan O'Mahoney and Laura Winter