The Deminer

In the chaotic aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein, Fakhir, a father of eight, is serving in the Iraqi army. All around him, he sees innocent civilians getting injured by landmines, so he determines to disarm them with his own hands, using just a pocketknife and some wire cutters. He clears thousands of roadside bombs, mines and car bombs, knowing that every time he cuts a wire it could cost him his life—which he seems to find less important than the lives of others. In 2014, by this time having lost a leg, he starts working for the Kurdish Peshmerga, disarming boobytraps left behind by IS in and around Mosul. An enthusiastic home video maker, Fakhir collects hundreds of hours of footage of his day-to-day work. We hear his son’s commentary in voice-over as he watches videos of his heroic father in action. Fakhir perseveres despite the warnings of his colleagues—after all, every ringing cell phone could herald an explosion. Every snip of the wire-cutter almost gives us heart failure as well, because there's certainly no guarantee of a happy ending here.