On the eve of the 2003 U.S. invasion, filmmaker Shelley Saywell traveled to Iraq to film the lives of ordinary people - especially young Iraqis - who were caught between Saddam's tyranny and a devastated economy (for which they blamed the West).

Now, Saywell returns to find the people she met and interviewed before the war. What happened to them? Have they survived? Have their feelings about Saddam and the U.S. changed, or remained the same?

Traveling from Baghdad to Basra, across the severely damaged country, Saywell visits the ruined university campus, the back streets of Baghdad on night patrol, the blood soaked cells of Abu Graib prison, and the mass graves where mothers search for a scrap of familiar clothing.

Surprisingly, Saywell finds all her protagonists. There are surprises, some ironies, and we hear some things that could not be told while Saddam was in power.

But many anti-American feelings remain. Most pervasive is the sense of desperate confusion, the constant worry about what lies ahead in the dangerous, chaotic life under occupation.

"HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for its courageous journey into the mind of the young generation of Iraq. It reveals the feelings of the Iraqi people who dealt with mass killings under Hussein and now live under US-imposed curfews and checkpoints, demonstrating that the Iraqis have always been fighting and dealing with negative presences, and argues that the next generation have no vision left in this continuous vacuum."—Educational Media Reviews Online

"Engaging... offers an important corrective to the story on Iraq given to us by the Bush Administration and an often all-too-compliant corporate media."—Cineaste