I have to admit I stole this post's title from a guy I know named Ravi, who wondered how a movie about a heavy metal band in Baghdad could be called anything but Iraq & Roll. Good question. Instead, the documentary, which is about a Slipknot- and Metallica-loving outfit called Acrassicauda, and is showing at the Philadelphia Film Festival on Thursday at 7:15 at International House, is called Heavy Metal in Baghdad.
Directed by Canadian guerilla journos Eddy Moretti and Suroosh Alvi of VICE magazine, the doc follows the earnest, likable boys in the band - which takes its moniker from the Latin name for deadly black scorpions that crawl about in the desert outside Baghdad - from the days before Saddam Hussein's fall in 2003, until 2006, when they emigrate to Syria in an effort to stay alive and find a new practice space after their spot was destroyed by a SCUD missile.
The movie doesn't contain all that much music, in part because it turns out to be hard to get gigs when you're living in a war zone in an Islamic country where growing your hair long like Zakk Wylde can get you thrown in jail, or worse. It does, however, give you an excellent sense of what life is like on the ground in Baghdad, both for Iraqis simply trying to go about their daily lives and express themselves, and Western journalists attempting to report in a country where no one will be seen talking to them for fear of ending up dead. The MySpace page for the band, whose members now live in Turkey, is here. The trailer for the film is below.
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