Corona Cork Film Festival - Ghosts Of Abu Ghraib

This hard-hitting documentary is an inside look at the abuses which occurred in the autumn of 2003 at this Iraqi prison.Far from being an unauthorized, isolated event by rank-and-file soldiers acting on their own initiative, the film strongly suggests that the physical and psychological torture employed at the prison was an inevitable outgrowth of military and government policies that were implemented in a climate of fear and chaos, inadequate training and insufficient resources.

The interviews with soldiers who took part in and observed the torture at Abu Ghraib show them to be intelligent and articulate young men and women, not gun happy, sadistic torturers challenging what viewers may think they know about what took place at the prison. For the most part, soldiers stationed at Abu Ghraib were not trained as prison guards, yet as few as 300 of them were put in charge of up to 6,000 prisoners, who were held in squalid and dangerous conditions.

Soldiers interviewed still seem dazed and shamed by their acts. Others interviewed include some of the now-free detainees, retired military commanders, human rights activists, scholars and journalists. News footage and ‘home movie’ Abu Ghraib materials further blend to create a disturbing sense of two wars – one packaged for public consumption, the other subterranean, often illegal by inter-national law. – Variety