The Dove Flyer (2013)

“Between the years 1950–51 close to 130,000 Jews left Iraq. The most ancient community in the world ceased to exist.”

A box-office smash hit in Israel based on the best-selling book of the same name, The Dove Flyer offers a fascinating insight into a seldom-covered part of history.

Sixteen-year-old Kabi is from a Jewish family in Iraq. When his uncle, Hazkael, is arrested, Kabi joins the Zionist underground. This feature film, based on a book of the same name, covers the final years of the Jewish community in Baghdad in the 1950s before its expulsion to Israel. The film portrays a family living in a world of contradictions and ambivalent relationships; the complex existence of the Jewish community in Iraq, which had strong ties to the surrounding Muslim world and Arabic culture, yet at the same time feared for its safety.