Hasan Al-Sader
Jannah is a short documentary I directed as part of my BA in Television Production. The documentary explores the early life of my father, Mohammed Al-Sader, who grew up in an authoritarian regime in 1970s Baghdad. During a family reunion with my father and his brother, they relive the stories of their turbulent childhood and how the family was torn apart by the Ba'ath regime. This documentary explores politics, violence, trauma, and family.
The objective of this documentary was to explore my father's early childhood and how being surrounded by violence and authoritarianism has shaped the man he is today. My father had always told me short stories of his past during my upbringing and I felt it was necessary to pick up the missing pieces to fully understand what exactly happened to my family in Iraq. For this, I felt it was important for my father to reunite with his brother for the two of them to tell me their life stories to paint the full picture. I also wanted to make this documentary to honour those in my family whose lives were taken during the Ba'ath regime and to let their legacies live on.
My outcome for this project is not to follow informative storytelling, but emotional storytelling. I want an audience to feel something when they come out of it, it will not be happiness, it might not be sadness, but I am confident people will leave this with it lingering in their memories. I could not be more grateful to my crew and friends as without them this project would never have been made. This was an incredibly painful project to make for myself, and I am very lucky to have the friends I have by my side and make sure that this project would be finished and I could not thank them enough. Without Sean Macnamara, Karl Corcoran, Lilla Petnehazi and Patrick Devereux, this project would not be what you see today.
Hasan Al-Sader is a documentary director/videographer with a keen interest towards history, psychology and characters. He approaches documentaries and videography through guerilla film-making and he follows the principle "less is more". in 2026 he directed his NFS Grad short documentary Jannah, a personal and reflective documentary about his father's turbulent past living in the Ba'athist regime in 1970s Baghdad, Iraq.
