Sari's Mother

Reviewed at its 3rd and final screening Friday Sept. 15, 2006 at the Varsity 7 theatre during its World Premiere run at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

This is a 22 minute short and is apparently an outtake from the same director's Iraq in Fragments film which contains 3 other portraits of Iraqi people in recent times. Fragments won Best Director, Cinematography and Editing in the Documentary category at Sundance in Jan. 2006 but was mysteriously itself absent from TIFF this year.

Sari's Mother is well made and shows the heartbreaking situation of a 10 year old boy (who looks 5 years old in terms of growth) who had contracted AIDS through a blood/plasma transfusion and the circumstances at his family farm and how his mother with a brave and forced smiling face tries to get medical care through a broken down medical system where bureaucracy still reigns crazily supreme regardless.

Director was not in attendance for a Q&A.