Private Project

Baghdad, California

In a city divided between rich and poor, hills and the valley––El Cajon’s face has been transformed by tens of thousands of refugees. Post the War On Terror, it is now “Little Baghdad,” the largest home for refugees of the Iraq War in California. But, the face of power – the rich and the lawmakers – remains unchanged.

Every ten years, the U.S. counts its citizens in the Census, tabulating the tapestry of identities which comprise the country. But most significantly, it’s data determines the distribution of resources, power, and representation. Two women––a Latina from California’s farm-labor organizing tradition, and a Kurdish running a women’s shelter––are organizing to get their communities finally counted to tally the changes in this town.

As these activists go door-to-door in this American city, they try to convince their neighbors to face the question: can the democracy promised to Iraq, 7000 miles away and 20 years ago, be found in the home of the free?

  • Diego Lynch
    Director
  • Rahmah Pauzi
    Director
    Jiwa Pendidik (The Soul of a Teacher), Welcome to Malaysia, The Kleptocrats, Tiger Stripes
  • Rahmah Pauzi
    Producer
    Jiwa Pendidik (The Soul of a Teacher), Welcome to Malaysia, The Kleptocrats, Tiger Stripes
  • Cheyenne Tan
    Story Editor
    St. Louis Superman
  • Hidayah Hisham
    Editor
    Ayahku, Dr. G
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Short
  • Runtime:
    35 minutes 51 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 30, 2024
  • Production Budget:
    10,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    Arabic, English, Spanish
  • Shooting Format:
    4K, HD
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Diego Lynch, Rahmah Pauzi

Director:

Diego Lynch is a San Diego based filmmaker, media & journalism educator, communications professional, and an environmental activist with an MA in Multimedia Journalism from NYU. He has a long history of environmental activism dating back to his pre-teens – sweating to preserve San Diego’s Ocean Sage Chaparral. He's done media works with various community organizations and justice-based NGOs including Viet Vote, License to Freedom, The Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans (PANA), and Maraya Performing Arts, while regularly teaches at the Media Arts Center San Diego & Southwestern College. He's a 2023 San Diego RISE Urban Leadership Fellow and is One World Media's 2020 Global Short Doc Forum Filmmaker through his film Baghdad, California. Diego’s work tracks the stresses being placed on U.S. society as the empire built in the 20th century meets with the limitations of the 21st.

Co-Director:

Rahmah Pauzi is a Malaysian documentary filmmaker, journalist, and a product strategist with an MA in News and Documentary from New York University. She’s done work for outlets such as PBS, Al Jazeera, Channel News Asia, and BFM Radio Kuala Lumpur. She is a performer in the internationally-acclaimed documentary theater about Malayan exiled communists "A Notional History," that's toured to Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Yokohama Performing Arts Meeting, Spielart, and Bangkok International Performing Arts Meeting. She's also a Freedom Film Fest 2022 Grantee, One World Media 2021 Fellow, and an ASIADOC 2021 Storytelling Lab Filmmaker through her film, “The Soul of a Teacher.” Most of her works revolve around the themes of home, displacement, crossroads, and the intersection of the political and the personal.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

One morning, in the mid-1990s I sat on the ground playing with a dummy cluster bomb – identical to the bombs periodically rained on Iraq during the post-Gulf War decade of sanctions. While I fiddled with the cool little contraption, my grandfather explained how this bomb would melt its way through a tank’s armor. My grandfather, lead creator of the Tomahawk Cruise Missile, went on to explain how he had customized his other bombs to destroy a power station, a dam, an office building, an airport, etc., etc.

The iconic smart bomb of the 1990s, that transmuted Iraq’s infrastructure to rubble, was my grandfather’s brainchild. It’s the same bomb that dropped on Syria in 2017 and that gave Gaddafi's Libyan regime its last push.

My grandfather, Robert A. Lynch, is memorialized in the Smithsonian museum on its Wall of Honor. It would be more than a decade before I realized the ramifications of his creativity. As a poli-sci and economics undergrad at the University of California Santa Cruz in 2009, I nosed through a text on U.S. policy in the 1990s towards Iraq. Sanctions and targeted infrastructure destruction had effectively deprived Iraq of electricity, costing the lives of several hundred thousand civilians. My grandfather’s toy had done its work. The wealth that had got me into that university, bled directly from those Iraqis.

I came to EL Cajon, mere miles from my childhood home, after years of trying to find a voice in our republic. After undergrad, I stayed afloat in the post-2008 job market, working gig based food service and manual labor. Several years of this taught me that ceaselessly volunteering wasn’t going to get my foot in any door; so I headed to the New York University graduate program for journalism. After two years working in New York, part time writing and freelance videography, I found this story.

This story spoke to my training – political, economic and journalistic, and no one who grew up in the shadow of the War on Terror could fail to be curious to speak to its victims. However, I have more than nothing in common with my subjects. The feeling that your voice doesn’t matter in our system is familiar to many permalancers, working-class citizens, and refugees alike. I don’t think I can save them, but, if they can get representation, maybe an empowered democracy can save us even a little.