Battle for Haditha

Battle for Haditha

On 19 November 2005, an incident in western Iraqi city Haditha left one American Marine and 24 Iraqis dead. Initial reports claimed that Marines had returned fire after a "gunmen attacked the convoy with small-arms fire". A day after the incident, a Haditha student videotaped the scene at the local morgue and at the homes where the killings had occurred, which provoked a Time magazine article disputing the original account.

A Pentagon probe alleged that Marines had massacred the Iraqis in retaliation for the death of one of their comrades and some commentators began to refer to the event as 'Iraq's My Lai'.

With a cast featuring a number of ex-Marines, and dialogue improvised based on the directors instructions, Nick Broomfield's dramatisation of these horrifying and disputed events of the war follow in the vein of his previous fiction film Ghosts, bringing the viewer frighteningly close to the imagined action while retaining a documentarian authority, integrity and quest for truth.

Michael Hayden

Souljah

A young black man on an estate may be victimised, but he is determined not going to become a victim..