The “fragments” in this amazing film refers both to the Sunni, Shia and Kurdish fragments of Iraq and to the three fragments of the film itself, one part from each faction.

The first part is the sad story of 11-year-old Mohammed, an orphan in Baghdad who fails in school while failing to please the lazy mechanic boss who beats him and calls him stupid. The Sunni voices here are cynical and bitter, angry at the oppression of Saddam yet almost nostalgic for that authoritarian certainty in the midst of the chaos that the Americans have brought.

The second part focuses on Moqtada al-Sadr and Shia fanaticism to the south. The images here are disturbing: bloody shirts of those beating themselves with chains during religious ceremonies, vigilante violence against those selling alcohol in the market, robotic chants of the obedient followers, the menacing face of al-Sadr himself. It’s pretty clear than Moqtada is no Gandhi and clear that the American invasion has stirred up a real hornets nest of religious fervor.

The last part is a bit more peaceful…the pastoral scenes of the Kurdish north, aged fathers and earnest sons herding sheep or working in smoke-belching furnaces making the bricks that will literally create the reconstruction. Yet here, too, there is a wistfulness that the long Kurdish dream for independence has been replaced by the inevitability of the American occupation. The young Kurdish boy dreams of university studies, but ends up dropping out to support his elderly father instead.

Those wishing for a linear polemic against the war will be disappointed by the film “Iraq in Fragments.” It is not a diatribe against the war, nor is it a reflection of the American experience there (like “The War Tapes”). Rather it is a very brave 2-year search by Seattle documentary filmmaker James Longley (2003-2005) to give voice to authentic Iraqi experience. The images are truly beautiful, because the country itself is beautiful. The people are flawed, as are we all, so there truly are no heroes here.

Clearly, there is no disagreement among any Iraqis in the film on several points. The United States is a hated occupier (though less in Kurdish areas), come to exploit Iraq for its oil. Things were bad under Saddam, but they are much worse now. There were sectarian divisions before, but they are deadly now. In a City Pages interview, Longley notes that the unembedded reporting he did would no longer be possible now. While he described an Iraq breaking in fragments during the early years of the occupation, it is simply too violent now to do what he did then. Iraq is broken. We broke it. During our continuing presence, it just keeps getting worse.

“Iraq in Fragments” is playing through February 20 at the Bell Museum, 10 Church Street SE, Minneapolis, at the U of M East Bank. Show times are 7 and 9 pm, with 5:15 matinees on Saturday and Sunday, and no shows on Wednesday.