Young Iraqi film students tell their own stories from Mosul

A budding Iraqi filmmaker yells "action!" as an actress clambers over rubble in Mosul's Old City, proud students of a nascent film school in the former jihadist bastion.

Mosul still bears the scars of the brutal reign of the Islamic State group, who overran the northern Iraqi city in 2014 and imposed their ultraconservative interpretation of Islamic law.

They destroyed everything from centuries-old churches to musical instruments, before being routed in a devastating battle in 2017.

Now, in a collaboration between the Mosul fine arts academy, a Belgian theater company and UN cultural agency UNESCO, 19 students are getting a chance to make their first short films.

"We live in Mosul, we know everything that happened," said 20-year-old theater student Mohammed Fawaz. "We want to show it all to the world through cinema."

Over a four-month course, students get a taste of everything from writing and shooting to acting and editing, according to Milo Rau, artistic director of Belgian NTGent theater company who is behind the initiative.

Cameras and microphones in hand, the students are now hitting Mosul's streets to tell stories from their wounded city.

An actress dressed as a bride searches for her husband, only to discover he has stepped on a landmine.

Children and other residents crowd around curiously, while a neighbor refuses to turn off a noisy generator.

"We're losing the light," one of the instructors reminds students, as the December sun goes down.

Studying at the fine arts academy after the IS defeat was a bit like "passing from the Stone Age to modernity", said student Fawaz.

A fan of blockbuster movies like the Marvel and "Fast and Furious" franchises, Fawaz spent several of his teen years at home with no television or schooling under the extremists, learning English through books and thanks to a neighbor.