Pernahkah anda membayangkan sebuah band metal yang eksis di tengah kecamuk perang, pemerintahan yang kolot, serta kultur masyarakat yang amat relijius?! Di mana memanjangkan rambut atau memakai kaos metal saja bisa menjadi bencana. Ini tentang impian anak muda penyuka musik keras di negeri seribu satu mimpi dan seribu dua konflik. Mereka yakin tidak sedang berada di tempat yang salah untuk menyukai Slayer atau Metallica. Setiap orang memang punya hak untuk mewujudkan mimpi 'tercadasnya'. Impossible is nothing. Seperti grup band Acrassicauda yang memainkan musik keras dari tanah Irak sejak jaman Saddam Hussein masih berkuasa. Sebuah film dokumenter berjudul Heavy Metal In Baghdad menunjukkan bahwa musik metal itu universal - untuk siapapun dan di manapun. Juga membuka mata dunia kalau musik metal itu tidak ke mana-mana, tetapi ada di mana-mana...

FILM SYNOPSIS
Heavy Metal in Baghdad is a feature film documentary that follows the Iraqi heavy metal band Acrassicauda from the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 to the present day. Playing heavy metal in a Muslim country has always been a difficult (if not impossible) proposition but after Saddam's regime was toppled, there was a brief moment for the band in which real freedom seemed possible. That hope was quickly dashed as their country fell into a bloody insurgency. From 2003-2006, Iraq disintegrated around them while Acrassicauda struggled to stay together and stay alive, always refusing to let their heavy metal dreams die. Their story echoes the unspoken hopes of an entire generation of young Iraqis.

PRODUCTION NOTES
The seed for Heavy Metal in Baghdad was planted in 2004, when we first ran the story of the Iraqi Heavy Metal band Acrassicauda in VICE Magazine. A year later, in the summer of 2005, Suroosh Alvi and I found ourselves in Lebanon, hoping to take a flight on something called "Magic Carpet Airways", a charter that flew once a week from Beirut to Baghdad death defying corkscrew landing included. We had set up a concert for Acrassi cauda in Baghdad at the Al Fanar Hotel, but a car bomb planted outside a mostly Christian nightclub off of Mono Street messed with our plans. All the flights were cancelled. It was too late to pull the plug, so we turned our friend war-zone photojournalist Johan Spanner into a concert promoter and got our first extended glimpse into the difficulty of the band's dream. It's not easy to be a heavy metal artist in post-Saddam Iraq.

In the summer of 2006, one year later, we finally found our way into Baghdad, determined to find the band and pick up their story. The city was in the clutches of a fierce fight that the US forces had coined "The Battle for Baghdad." Up to 300 hundred people a day were dying in some of the worst insurgent attacks of the entire occupation. It was the misery of 2006 that created the rationale for the "surge" of today.

Suroosh and I spent days running around a beaten-down Baghdad and discovered that only two members of the band (Firas and Faisal) were still living there. We followed them through the city to the few places we were able to visit safely and documented their plight, shooting on a small camera with a shitty microphone rigged with tape and twine. In between cracks and through bulletproof glass, we managed to capture the intense paranoia and confusion of a city descending into chaos.

Three months later we got a call from the band. Firas and Faisal had managed to get out of Iraq safely and had joined the other two members - Tony and Marwan - in Damascus. We jumped on a plane and flew to Syria, where we shot the last installment and financed and facilitated what is quite possibly the first Iraqi metal record ever. The Damascus demos provide much of the film's soundtrack.

Back in New York, Bernardo Loyola and Monica Hampton took the footage we shot of our young Iraqi friends and crafted it into the film we have today. We hope that Heavy Metal in Baghdad gives voice to a voiceless generation of innocent young Iraqis who have had everything even their heavy metal hopes ? taken from them by force. [Eddy Moretti]

ACRASSICAUDA
Born out of a basement rehearsal space in Baghdad, Acrassicauda (Latin for "Black Scorpion") is Iraq's most famous heavy metal band. Tutored by music instructor and guitar virtuoso Saad "Yngwie" Say and inspired by western bands like Metallica, Slayer and Slipknot, they began writing and playing metal in 2001. They soon learned that their dream of perform ing live in Iraq was going to be no easy task.

Original members Firas (bass), Tony (lead guitar), Marwan (drums), Faisal (rhythm guitar) and Waleed (lead vocals) were only able to play 3 shows before the war started in 2003. Soon after, Waleed retired from the band and fled the country, leaving Faisal to fill the void of lead singer. Due to increased security precautions throughout Iraq, it became difficult to practice or even get through a show without serious problems. As the situation worsened in Baghdad they began receiving death threats from insurgent groups and religious fundamentalists accusing them of Satan worship. Eventually, it proved impossible to find any venue that was safe to perform in.

Thanks to generous donations made on their behalf, the band now resides in Turkey after living a year as refugees in Damascus, Syria. In their seven years as a band they have managed to play only 6 concerts in Baghdad, 2 in Syria and one in Turkey. The war has all but destroyed their dream to live in peace, grow their hair long, bang their heads and play metal as loud as they want. Life in Turkey is proving extremely difficult for them. Acrassicauda is literally a band on the run.

Faisal [Vocal / Rhythm Guitar]
"The time we created the band we just wanted to be one of our band heroes, and we always dreamed that we were gonna have a tour with them or stuff like that. Any young man could have a dream for his future."

Tony [Lead Guitar]
"Tony is a phenomenal guitar player." -Suroosh Alvi

Firas [Bass]
"I hope I live somewhere else, not in Iraq, so I can get long hair, long beard, Zakk Wylde style, You know what I'm saying?"

Marwan [Drums]
"Every single day, every single day. You got the troops and you got the terrorist outside, and we are stuck in the middle."

"Nobody was expecting that in Iraq heavy metal could exist...
We started it and we're not gonna stop." - Acrassicauda

[VICEFILMS/HMIB]
http://www.heavymetalinbaghdad.com/

VBS.TV Presents A Vice Films Production Heavy Metal In Baghdad Featuring Eddy Moretti, Suroosh Alvi, Firas Al Lateef, Faisal Talal, Marwan Reyad, Tony Aziz Directed and Produced By Eddy Moretti and Suroosh Alvi Produced By Monica Hampton Executive Producers Shane Smith and Spike Jonze Edited By Bernardo Loyola Music By Acrassicauda Length 84 Min Sound Dolby 5.1 Picture 1.85 Digital Language English / Arabic with English Subtitles.