Sahim Omar Kalifa’s 19-minute film Baghdad Messi was shortlisted in the Academy Awards Live Action Short category in 2015. Nine years later, the Belgian-Kurdish director has expanded the story into a feature film.
It is 2009 and Iraq is still convulsed by the U.S. invasion and occupation and by long-standing differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Hamoudi (Ahmed Mohammed Abdullah) has nothing to do with any of this. Ten years old, he is already a talented football (soccer) player, the captain and top goal-scorer of his local team. His idol is Lionel Messi, the star of the Barcelona team.
One day, Hamoudi and his teammates are caught in the crossfire between a U.S. private security company called Unity and locals who oppose the U.S.-supported government. Part of Hamoudi’s left leg is blown off. He has lost not only his leg, but the one thing about which he is passionate, football. As if this isn’t bad enough, his father, Kadhim, (Atheer Adel), who witnesses the attack on his son, is considered a “rat” by many of his neighbors because he works as a translator for Unity. In the middle of the night, their home is firebombed. Hamoudi and his parents are forced to relocate to the remote village where his aunt lives.
Hamoudi tries to join the village football ream as a goalkeeper, but is rejected because he only has one leg. And the situation becomes tense when Kadhim’s former occupation becomes known. Meanwhile, Hamoudi’s mother (Zahraa Ghandour) wants him to forget about football and face a more realistic future.
While all this is going on, football fans are focused on the upcoming Champion’s League final between Barcelona and Manchester United, which will pit football’s greatest stars, Lionel Messi versus Christiano Ronaldo. It says a lot about gender politics in Iraq that when Hamoudi and his pro-Messi friends mock Ronaldo, they do so by calling him “a sissy” and “a girl.”
Ahmed Mohammed Abdullah does a remarkable job of portraying Hamoudi. He, himself, lost part of his left leg when, at the age of four, he was injured in a missile attack that also killed his father. And he was a fan of Lionel Messi, whom he got to meet in March 2023 following a match in Paris.
The year after Kalifa was shortlisted for the short version of Baghdad Messi, he was shortlisted for the Academy Awards again for another short, Bad Hunter.
Baghdad Messi is dedicated to Hassan Ali Na’aim, a one-legged goalkeeper whom we see at the end of the film smothering a shot on goal. Director Kalifa has explained that Hassan was his first choice to play Hamoudi.
“But later we got the news that he had died. It was very bad news for his father and family… His father did everything for him, sold his own house for treatment in Iran, but to no avail.” Hassan was twelve years old when he died.
