Maysoon Pachachi

Iraqi filmmaker Maysoon Pachachi has been educated all over the world and speaks fluent English, Arabic, French and Italian. The daughter of Iraqi politician Adnan Pachachi, she studied philosophy at the University College of London and film at the Slade School of Art and the London International Film School. STRIKE ‘36, a 35mm black & white short fiction film, aired on the BBC and at the National Film Theatre and was directed by Pachachi during her last year of school. She worked for many years as an editor for television documentaries and dramas such as THE FLAME TREES OF THIKA, WIDOWS, MINDER and FAIRLY SECRET ARMY. Most notably, Pachachi was the editor behind the Canadian-UK co-produced feature film PAINTED ANGELS. She has also produced, edited and directed documentaries for the UK’s Channel 4, including VOICES FROM GAZA, which won the Red Ribbon Ward at San Francisco’s American Film and Video Festival; and IRAQI WOMEN: VOICES FROM EXILE. She also directed and edited the film SMOKE, for Hamlyn Prize-winning, Brazilian artist Lucia Nogueira. Other works directed by Pachachi include IRANIAN JOURNEY and LIVING WITH THE PAST: PEOPLE AND MONUMENTS IN MEDIEVAL CAIRO. Her most recent film, which she co-directed, produced and edited is BITTER WATER, a feature-length documentary about four generations of refugees in a Palestinian camp in Beirut.

Pachachi has also spent time teaching film and video directing and editing in Jerusalem and Gaza for the Jerusalem Film Institute and Med Media, a program of the European Union and at Birzeit University in Ramallah. She is currently developing films to be shot in Iraq and writing a feature film about Middle Eastern and Latin American immigrants in London, which she will direct. Pachachi currently lives in Britain, and plans to create a school and a film festival in Baghdad. (10/09)

Iranian Journey
A film by Maysoon Pachachi, Produced by Noura Sakkaf and Iraj Emami, 1999, 54 min., Color
Massoumeh Soltan Baloghie is the first woman long-distance bus driver in Iran and perhaps in the Islamic world. Iraqi filmmaker Maysoon Pachachi joins...

Iraqi Women
A film by Maysoon Pachachi, 1994, 54 min., Color
IRAQI WOMEN—VOICES FROM EXILE provides a fascinating and rare look at the recent history of Iraq through the eyes and experiences of Iraqi women livin...