‘Hanging Gardens’: Red Sea Review

Dir: Ahmed Yassin Al Daradj. Iraq, Palestine, Egypt, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia. 2022. 104mins.

The litter pickers who eke out an existence by collecting metal and other ‘valuables’ from Baghdad’s huge smouldering city dump protect themselves from the noxious fumes with scarves tied across their noses and mouths. But the dump, nicknamed the Hanging Gardens, is also a source of moral pollutants, as 12-year-old As’ad (Hussain Muhammad Jalil) discovers when he finds a discarded sex doll amid the filth and trash. This assured feature debut from Ahmed Yassin Al Daradj is an affecting story of lost innocence, strikingly shot and driven by persuasive performances from the young, non-professional cast.

The film’s main selling point is a genuinely impressive central performance from Jalil

The director’s graduation film, Children of God, won the Fipresci Award for Best Arab Short at the Dubai Film Festival and Best Live Action Short at Seoul Guro in 2013. After premiering in Venice and showing at Busan and Singapore, Hanging Gardens screened in competition at the Red Sea Film Festival where it took home both the Best Picture prize and also the award for Best Cinematography, for Duraid Munaijim’s arresting widescreen vistas. The awards notice could boost the film’s profile within the festival circuit. And its distinctive and unusual premise – Iraqi sex doll movies are not ten-a-penny – could perhaps recommend it to a curated streaming platform.

But the film’s main selling point is a genuinely impressive central performance from Jalil, who balances a childlike naivety and emotional vulnerability against wily street kid survival instincts. Older brother Taha (Wissam Diyaa) is appalled by the sex doll, and As’ad is obliged to leave the home they share, taking his treasured find. But while As’ad is sweetly protective of the doll, he realises that it is a lucrative asset; he and an older friend pimp out the doll to local teens who pay handsomely for a few minutes of pliable rubber delight. Munaijim’s agile camera is attuned to the flickering subtleties of Jalil’s performance, while also pulling back to reveal the full scope of the film’s backdrop, a hell-scape of garbage mountains and craters, where the unlucky spend their days scavenging and the less fortunate wind up dead and dumped.

 Within this treacherous terrain, As’ad and his older brother watch out for each other: Taha cautions the youngster to stay away from the precipitous cliff edges of rubbish; As’ad looks up to Taha and is thrilled with he is allowed to sit behind the wheel of his brother’s spluttering old jeep. There’s a mutual, tacit note of caution when they are forced to deal with the local boss, Al Haji (Jawad Al Shakarji), and his hired muscle. Al Haji is the dealer to whom they peddle their finds from the dump. But he’s also a dangerous figure who has a hand in all the black market neighbourhood business. As’ad instinctively knows that he needs to keep the sex doll a secret from Al Haji and his goons.

But the doll brings out the worst in the local men, stirring up an unholy storm of lust and avarice. Soon enough it is stolen and As’ad’s cherished secret reaches the ears of Al Haji and his criminal gang. Al Haji makes his displeasure known in no uncertain terms. And it’s an older, wiser As’ad who makes his peace with the vacant blue gaze of the doll.