Special Programme "Meeting with Tilda"  

“Mesopotamia’s uncrowned queen” – this is how British media describes Gertrude Bell. “Letters from Baghdad” is the story of this extraordinary woman. Voiced by Academy award winning actor Tilda Swinton, the documentary tells the dramatic story of this British diplomat, explorer and political powerhouse Gertrude Bell. Bell traveled widely in Arabia before being recruited by British military intelligence to help draw the borders of Iraq after WWI. Using never-seen-before footage of the region, the film chronicles Bell’s extraordinary journey into both the uncharted Arabian Desert and the inner sanctum of British male colonial power. With unique access to documents from the Iraq National Library and Archive and Gertrude Bell’s own letters, the story is told entirely in the words of the players of the day, excerpted verbatim from intimate letters, private diaries and secret communiqués. It is a unique look at both a remarkable woman and the tangled history of Iraq.”

Sabine Krayenbühl

Sabine Krayenbühl is an award winning editor. Her work includes Oscar and Independent Spirit Award nominated “My Architect” for which she received an American Cinema Editors (ACE) Eddie Award nomination. “Picasso and Braque go to the Movies” was produced by Martin Scorsese. She is a long-term member of New York Women in Film and Television.

Zeva Oelbaum

Zeva Oelbaum is an award winning producer and photographer. She recently produced “Ahead of Time”, a feature length documentary about centenarian journalist Ruth Gruber which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival before garnering six Best Documentary awards. She comes to film from a career as a still photographer and her work has been extensively published in periodicals such as “The New York Times Magazine”. Her photographs are in international public collections including the Bibliothèque nationale de France and The Brooklyn Museum.

Awards

Beirut International Film Festival – Best Feature Film, 2016
“Focal” International Awards – Best Use of Footage in a History Feature, 2017