''Battle for Haditha'' is a 2007 drama film directed by British director

Nick Broomfield Nicholas Broomfield (born 1948) is an English documentary film director. His self-reflective style has been regarded as influential to many later filmmakers. In the early 21st century, he began to use non-actors in scripted works, which he cal ...

based on the

Haditha killings The Haditha massacre (also called the Haditha killings or the Haditha incident) was a series of killings on November 19, 2005, in which a group of United States Marines killed 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians. The killings occurred in Haditha, a cit ...

. Dramatising real events using a documentary style, ''Battle for Haditha'' is Broomfield's follow up to '' Ghosts.'' The film was aired on

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...

in the UK on 17 March 2008.

Plot

The film is inspired by the

incident that occurred three months after the Battle of Haditha in the

Iraq War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق ( Kurdish) , partof = the Iraq conflict and the War on terror , image ...

. On 19 November 2005 in

Haditha , settlement_type = City , image_skyline = Inbound3292807512093856589نواعير حديثة.jpg , imagesize = , image_caption = , image_map = , mapsize = , map_caption ...

, a city in the western Iraqi province of

Al Anbar Al Anbar Governorate ( ar, محافظة الأنبار; ''muḥāfaẓat al-’Anbār''), or Anbar Province, is the largest governorate in Iraq by area. Encompassing much of the country's western territory, it shares borders with Syria, Jordan, ...

, 24 unarmed Iraqi men, women, and children were killed by a group of

United States Marines The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through com ...

following an incident where an I.E.D killed one Marine and seriously wounded two others. Since the release of the film, the US military controversially dropped all charges to all Marines involved. The names of the Marines have been changed in the film, while the Iraqi civilians retain their real names.

Production

Shot in Jerash, Jordan, the film uses former US Military personnel and Iraqi refugees to play many of the roles. However, the film was shot in an unconventional way – it was shot sequentially enabling the cast to build their characters as the story progressed. It also used real locations, and a very small documentary style film crew. This greatly added to the feeling of reality. Actors, while working from a detailed script, and the final form of the film reflects that structure, were also able to improvise and add to the dialogue, making it their own.

Cast

The film features: * Elliot Ruiz as Cpl Ramirez, a Marine who loses his composure after watching a friend die * Andrew McLaren as Captain Sampson, the tough company commander in Charge of Cpl Ramirez * Jase Willette as PFC Cuthbert, the young Marine whose death sets off the chain of events *

Yasmine Hanani Yasmine Hanani (born June 5, 1980) is an American actress. Hanani was born in Baltimore and grew up in Southfield, Michigan and later in Orange County, Southern California. Hanani has worked on documentaries "Voices of Iraq,". "My Country, M ...

as Hiba, a young Iraqi woman stuck in the middle of the chaos * Eric Mehalacopoulos as the no-nonsense Sgt Ross * Nathan Delacruz a former United States Marine plays Cpl Marcus with his infamous comical one liners * Falah Flayla as a former Iraqi Army officer turned insurgent * Thomas Hennessy Jr. as a Navy corpsman assigned to Kilo company

Film festivals

''Battle for Haditha'' was presented at the

Toronto Film Festival Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

on 11 September 2007. Director Nick Broomfield won the Silver Shell award for Best Director at the San Sebastian Film Festival on 29 September 2007. It was also presented at the

London Film Festival The BFI London Film Festival is an annual film festival founded in 1957 and held in the United Kingdom, running for two weeks in October with co-operation from the British Film Institute. It screens more than 300 films, documentaries and sho ...

on 30 October 2007.

Critical reception

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

reported the film had an average score of 65 out of 100, based on 12 reviews.

References

External links

* * * *
Defend Our Marines
interview with Elliot Ruiz {{DEFAULTSORT:Battle For Haditha 2007 films 2007 drama films British war drama films 2000s English-language films 2000s Arabic-language films Iraq War films Iraq War in fiction War films based on actual events Films set in Iraq Films directed by Nick Broomfield Films about the United States Marine Corps 2007 multilingual films British multilingual films 2000s British films