The Blood of My Brother: A Story of Death in Iraq (2006)

The action is so consciously real that at one point when a bullet could be seen coming towards one side of the camera I flinched to the other side of my seat.

A needed corrective to superficially pro-American news reports and documentaries from the reactionary right.

Click to read the article

[The filmmakers'] access is far broader than any TV network’s, and in the end, they transcended the body counts and bland abstractions that characterize most Western reporting on the war.

Documentary technique is poor, but Berends imparts a strong sense of the culture and the sort of dilemma that faces every member of this torn society.

I felt overly manipulated and sensed they were trying too hard to make a point, but unsure what point to make.

A scary and illuminating documentary made by an American that draws out our empathy for the grieving families of slain civilians in the Iraq war.

In the end, Berends sacrifices coherence for the sake of a story he's determined to tell, rather than focusing on the one that's practically telling itself.