Longley is a film-maker of intelligence and empathy.

| Feb 5, 2018

Visually, the director's flair is impressive. But Longley's clear intention of using children's faces to better tug at our heartstrings would be more admirable if it didn't feel as shamelessly staged.

Full Review | Mar 6, 2008

Too bad James Longley couldn't have broadcast this insightful documentary immediately after he shot it in 2003 and 2004.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 6, 2007

Bafflingly, the threats in an occupied country consistently come from within, not without or overhead: what has the effect of the US occupation and Hussein's vicious rule been on these people? Offers a fragmented, obscuring picture of Iraq.

Full Review | Apr 1, 2007

Iraq in Fragments ... appears to be asking a simple, but often unmentioned, question: Oh yeah, what about the people of Iraq?

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 30, 2007

A timely, lyrical and candid look at daily life in a post-invasion Iraq.

| Original Score: A- | Mar 20, 2007

The technique is more expressionistic than naturalistic, but it makes the film far more vivid and emotionally satisfying.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 17, 2007

The film is terrific at providing a kaleidoscopic sense of life unfolding, with imaginative editing and colors that seem to leap off the screen.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 16, 2007

The film is both gritty and lyrical, showing how tanks share the Baghdad streets with donkeys as well as the quiet beauty of the Kurdish countryside.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Mar 8, 2007

What Iraq in Fragments lacks in fresh reportage or sending a political message, it makes up for with unique insight.

| Mar 1, 2007

Because [director] Longley uses a technique that forgoes interviews and voiceover commentary in favour of observation and revealing juxtapositions, his movie puts you both in the chaos and just above it.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 24, 2007

[An] evocative, heartbreaking documentary told from three disparate but equally compelling perspectives: the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 23, 2007

Stands up as a classic war documentary, in its unusual poetic form and by its extraordinary access to the lives of ordinary Iraqis.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 23, 2007

Iraq in Fragments sometimes feels random, but it is a well-crafted, thoughtful study of the dueling divisiveness and hope that will define the region long after foreign troops leave.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 23, 2007

We're used to seeing Iraq through the lens of washed-out digital video, so it's striking how sumptuous and elegantly-composed the shots are in "Iraq in Fragments."

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 23, 2007

James Longley's devastating documentary Iraq in Fragments has neither narration nor obvious political ax to grind, but it manages to tell us something about Iraq that we aren't getting or can't get from standard news coverage.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 22, 2007

By turns tender and shocking, Iraq in Fragments strikes a rare balance between impromptu fluidity and feature-film narrative control, in the process resisting both partisanship and predigested points of view.

| Original Score: 5/6 | Feb 17, 2007

Director James Longley doesn't say anything new about the politics of Iraq, but he leaves us with a vivid impression of its people, its places and its seemingly irreconcilable contradictions.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 15, 2007

In addition to the interesting camera work, the documentary's undeniable appeal comes in how close Longley gets to the characters, who are all male. They speak openly of the past, the U.S. forces, the uncertain future.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 9, 2007

Longley is a strikingly effective director

| Original Score: 88/100 | Feb 6, 2007