Assembled mostly from home video footage shot by army colonel Fakhir Berwari and his associates between 2003 and 2008, this tense verité documentary is a difficult, thrilling watch.
Fakhir – “Crazy Fakhir” to his American colleagues – is a Kurdish deminer, a mine-clearing expert who uses a knife and pair of wire clippers to manually disarm the electronic triggers (the live “heart of a mine”) of the landmines that litter Mosul, part of the terror strategy in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. His unwavering dedication is grimly fascinating, though it’s difficult to know if he is motivated by altruism or a morbid adrenaline rush.
