MUMBAI: PyraMovies first co-production film Son of Babylon, by Iraqi filmmaker Mohamed Al-Daradji, will have its national premiere in Iraq. The film will be screened on 6 May on the day Iraq commemorates its missing.

Son of Babylon had its world premiere at the Middle East International Film Festival 2009 and went on to be screened at Sundance Film Festival 2010 and the Berlin International Film Festival 2010 where it won two awards, the Peace Award and the Amnesty International Film Award.

The film Son of Babylon begins in Northern Iraq in 2003, three weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Ahmed, a 12-year-old Kurdish boy, begrudgingly follows in the shadow of his grandmother who on hearing the news that prisoners of war have been found alive in the South, is determined to discover the fate of her missing son, Ahmed’s father, who never returned from the Gulf War in 1991.

Running alongside the film is the Iraq’s Missing Campaign, with the support of Pyramedia CEO and executive producer of Son of Babylon, Nashwa Al Ruwaini which spotlights Iraq’s recent genocide internationally through the film. Over 1.5 million people have gone missing over the last 40 years and hundreds of thousands of bodies have been recovered from 300 mass graves so far with numbers continually growing. The film promotes strong humanitarian awareness, of the genocide of the Iraqi victims during Saddam’s regime, who are only now being unearthed in Iraq’s mass graves.

Ruwaini said, "Son of Babylon is a milestone in Iraqi cinema and it has been a long road to the film’s premiere in Iraq. We hope the film will be received well in Baghdad, especially as it is showing during the month of the missing in Iraq, hopefully bringing about change in this complex country. With the Iraq’s Missing Campaign, we will also continue to do as much as possible in working to identify the millions buried in the mass graves."