Omer Salih

Finalist, the Sony Impact Award 2007

Iraqi
Shot: Iraq, June 2006  
Guardian Films for BBC This World
Broadcast by BBC  

The film depicts life inside Al Yarmouk hospital, one of the biggest in Baghdad, in one of the most dangerous parts of the city, which now mainly treats bomb victims. As a former ER doctor, Omer was able to gain unique access to the hospital and its staff. He filmed in the ER, the operating theatres, the blood bank, and travelled with ambulance crews as they brought in casualties. It is so dangerous to work there that many refused to show their face on camera.

“The sequence at the end of the film – shot from inside an ambulance – is absolutely outstanding. In a sense it is the mirror image of the footage we normally see – of ambulances rushing past. I’ve never seen the human effects of what is happening in Iraq captured in quite that way before.”
The judges praised the excellent journalism, describing this film as “A vision of hell.”

Biography
Omer Salih qualified in medicine at the University of Baghdad in 2001. He worked as a resident doctor at Al Kharkh General Hospital in the city specialising in orthopaedic surgery and trauma. In 2005 he worked in the Baghdad bureau of National Public Radio as an interpreter and fixer. Since then he has worked for Guardian Films, New Yorker magazine and other media organisations. In 2007 he left Iraq after winning a Fulbright scholarship to study journalism in the US. ' Baghdad: A Doctor's Story', won an International Emmy Award for best current affairs in 2007.