{"id":1883,"date":"2026-09-29T18:03:48","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T13:03:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=1883"},"modified":"2026-09-29T18:03:48","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T13:03:48","slug":"iraq-war-film-atonement-tells-story-of-us-marine-seeking-iraqi-familys-forgiveness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=1883","title":{"rendered":"Iraq War film ‘Atonement’ tells story of US Marine seeking Iraqi family’s forgiveness"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Three generations of an Armenian-Christian family were driving home in Baghdad in April 2003 \u200cwhen US Marines in a firefight with Iraqi forces fired on their cars, killing three men.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Almost a decade later, two women who survived the attack sat down in their Glendale, California, living room with one of the Marines who pulled the trigger.<\/p>\n

That \u200bencounter serves as the climax of \u201cAtonement,\u201d writer-director Reed Van Dyk\u2019s feature debut, which had its North \u200bAmerican premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this month and opens in theatres on \u2060Friday.<\/p>\n

Based on a 2012 New Yorker article by Dexter Filkins, the film stars Kenneth Branagh as Michael \u200bReid, a journalist who reported on the gunfight and arranged the meeting. Hiam Abbass portrays Mariam, the family matriarch \u200bwhose husband and two sons were killed, while Boyd Holbrook is Lou D\u2019Alessandro, the former Marine seeking forgiveness. The names were altered from the real-life characters: former Marine Lu Lobello, Margaret Kachadoorian and Filkins.<\/p>\n

Van Dyk, speaking to Reuters<\/em> during an interview with \u200bthe cast, said Iraqi characters in typical Iraq War films are \u201cviewed through sniper scopes or in the background,\u201d \u200band he set out to invert that perspective.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really exciting for me to centralise these people who were affected \u200cdeeply by \u2060this instance and by war in general,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

After returning from Iraq, Lobello struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder, haunted by the memory that his unit had killed civilians that day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis bullet goes both ways, and you\u2019re really seeing Lou grapple with that,\u201d Holbrook said, echoing a line from the film.<\/p>\n

Lobello eventually asked Filkins to connect \u200bhim with the Kachadoorians. The \u200bfamily agreed to meet, \u2060and they forgave him.<\/p>\n

Abbass said that, in portraying Mariam, she channelled her experience as a mother and a Palestinian woman who grew up around wars. She said \u200bshe was struck by her capacity for forgiveness.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis woman was able to forgive, but \u200bimagine how \u2060many people on Earth that lived that situation are incapable to \u2026 forgive,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Branagh called the film\u2019s central interaction an \u201cextraordinary act of vulnerability\u201d and praised the willingness of both sides to have a conversation without a clear resolution.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re left \u2060with \u200ba tremendous sort of interchange between people in impossible situations with \u200bdifficult answers to find \u2014 if they can be found,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAtonement\u201d opens in select theatres on October 2, expanding widely on October 9.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three generations of an Armenian-Christian family were driving home in Baghdad in April 2003 \u200cwhen US Marines in a firefight with Iraqi forces fired on their cars, killing three men. Almost a decade later, two women who survived the attack sat down in their Glendale, California, living room with one of the Marines who pulled the trigger. That \u200bencounter serves as the climax of \u201cAtonement,\u201d writer-director Reed Van Dyk\u2019s feature debut, which had its North \u200bAmerican premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this month and opens in theatres on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"gutentor_comment":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}