Iraqi filmmaker found dead a week after going missing, says brother

Luay Fadhil's films were strong on social commentary and won awards at Dubai and Geneva festivals

Filmmaker Luay Fadhil, 41, was found dead on Monday a week after his disappearance. Photo: Abbas Fadhil

Iraqi artist and filmmaker Luay Fadhil has been found dead a week after his disappearance, his brother said on Monday.

Fadhil, 41, was last seen on June 13 as he left the College of Fine Arts in Waziriyah, an eastern neighbourhood of Baghdad.

“My brother, father and friend is dead. I found him at the forensic [morgue],” his brother Abbas wrote on Facebook on Monday.

Abbas had appealed for his brother's safe return on Sunday, leaving his phone number for those who have details to call him.

“The last time he was seen at 10.50am,” he wrote on Facebook. “He’s a kind human being an has no problems with anyone, I hope to see him among us again and safe.”

Abbas told The National that his brother's body had been found in the Tigris by the Iraqi River Police "with blood on his face". He didn't elaborate further.

Interior Minister Lt Gen Abdul Amir Al Shammari has ordered an investigation into the incident.

The filmmaker was a originally a construction engineer before taking a course at the New York Film Academy Abu Dhabi, according to Ruya Foundation, a Baghdad-based cultural NGO.

Award-winning director

Among the films he directed were Lipstick, in 2012, about sex education classes at a boy’s high school in Baghdad, and Cotton, in 2013, about a girl from a village outside the holy Shia revered city of Najaf as she approaches her teens.

Lipstick won the Gold Award at the Festival International du Film Oriental de Geneva in 2014. Cotton won several awards, including Best Director, at the Dubai International Film Festival in 2014.

“There is no sex education at school in Iraq,” Mr Fadhil told Ruya Foundation in an interview published in 2017. “This affects the boys in the classroom of Lipstick, and the girl on the farm in Cotton,” he said.

He called the teenage years as the “most dangerous in the development of a human being".

"These are the fragile years when a person’s ethics and opinions are formed. The terrorists and militias that we have in Iraq today are often recruited as teenagers,” he said.

The circumstances of his disappearing are still unclear. The Forensic Department made no comment.