The trail of "secret migration" was a shock to me. I knew a little about the difficulties, just bits of news in the media.

I'm talking about the essence of humanity. Hope is mixed into the blood of every human being, everywhere and in every time.

Whenever we went out to film in the street we would end up in the police station and in the offices of some other security agency. They deliberately intimidated us. I moved to Kurdistan and changed my name and made my first feature film in Kurdistan with very basic resources.

The trail of "secret migration" was a shock to me. I knew a little about the difficulties, just bits of news in the media.

I studied at the Academy during the years of economic sanctions. Life was almost dead because the sanctions imposed on Iraq by the civilized world were so strict.

Losing hope means ceasing to love my son and my girlfriend and many friends and people around the world.

For seven years I wrote and published my texts on the Internet and no Arab festival invited me and no Arab publishing house wanted to publish my books, and I wasn't known in the Western world because of my political positions.