Critic Reviews

Heartrending throughout, Iraqi Odyssey is everything you want in a documentary — informative, involving, and eager to decipher complex, often paradoxical historical conundrums. Everything, that is, except visually interesting.

Watching it is like slowly leafing through a giant scrapbook whose contents include the individual stories of a large extended family.

Mostly one wishes for a more concise edit that would pull this impressive avalanche of memories and faded photos together a lot sooner.

The running time of two hours and 43 minutes is unquestionably self-indulgent; thankfully the clan’s charisma keeps attention from lagging too much despite frequent opportunities for trimming.

With the mixing of the sprawling family tree with geopolitical imbroglios already proving daunting for viewers, the filmmaker exacerbates the confusion by eschewing a linear chronology.