Life after the Apocalypse: The Lions at Yerevan
The poem “The End and The Beginning,” by Polish poet and Nobel Prize winner Wisława Szymborska, begins with the sentence: “After every war/ someone has to clean up.” It could serve as the motto for Zaradasht Ahmed’s documentary The Lions by the River Tigris.
Born in Iraq but living in Norway, the Kurdish director travels with his camera to Mosul, located 350 kilometers northwest of Baghdad—one of the oldest cities in the world, with a history dating back over 8,000 years. In June 2014, Mosul was captured by ISIS, the Islamic State militants. The occupation lasted over three years and ended with the recapture of the city in July 2017, after months of fighting, by the united forces of the Iraqi army and Kurdish guerrillas.
During this offensive, Mosul was razed to the ground. It lies in ruins, upon which life is slowly reviving. And this is where Ahmed’s film begins. The director chooses three (no longer young) men as his protagonists. Musician Fadel can finally play solo violin on the banks of the Tigris; during the Islamic State, all fine arts were banned and practicing them was punishable by death. Former soldier Fakhri, with the manners and appearance of a dandy, creates a museum in his home of items that were saved from the destructive activities of ISIS. There are so many of these small items that it is difficult to move among them. Fakhri wants to make a beautiful portal with lions the jewel of his collection; it’s the only thing that, carefully hidden from the occupiers, survived from Bashar’s historic home. However, Bashar has no intention of selling the portal, hoping that he will be able to rebuild the house, which was blown up in a suicide attack by ISIS fighters.
Fakhri’s obsession with collecting and Bashar’s desperation, as he searches in vain for money to rebuild his family nest, are the two main themes of the film. Meanwhile, preparations are underway at the local theatre for a performance in which residents will talk about their experiences during the terror; beauty salons, also banned by ISIS, are reopening; youth gangs search for valuable items in the ruins; and the authorities take photos against the backdrop of the rebuilding city and make empty promises. Nihil novi. Meanwhile, in the national museum, conservators laboriously put together fragments of sculptures and statues smashed by the occupiers. Archival scenes with the ISIS barbarians destroying ancient exhibits—a kind of a murder of culture and tradition—are really painful to watch.
The film occasionally shows the protagonists sitting on the banks of the Tigris and remembering their former lives before the war. But what is more important is the “here and now,” the effort of starting all over again. Life, like a river, goes with the flow, looking back at nothing, and in this way triumphs over death and destruction. So although Ahmed’s documentary tells of sad, even tragic things, and although there is a lot of nostalgia and regret in it, it is nevertheless filled with hope. For its protagonists are people who have not allowed themselves to be defeated.
I’m a guy from Poland, so this film brings to my mind the history of my country. The history of its capital, Warsaw, completely destroyed during the war by the Nazis and rebuilt from the rubble by the common efforts of its citizens after the occupation ended. We must remember the past, but we must also be able to forget it in order to move on. As Szymborska wrote in the poem quoted at the beginning: “Those who knew/ what was going on here/ must give way to/ those who know little./ And less than little./ And finally as little as nothing.”
Bartosz Zurawiecki
Edited by Robert Horton
©FIPRESCI 2025