There are moments in the cinema where you want to laugh but feel like it’s inappropriate. This is especially true for Kilometer Zero, a dark comedy set in Iraq during the Iraq’Iran war in 1988.

Director Hiner Saleem pays tribute to his homeland Kurdistan in this compassionate retrospective look into the cruel persecution of the Kurds at the hands of Sadaam Hussein’s army.

Amusing in moments of despair, the young Kurd Ako wishes his deaf and senile bed-ridden father-in-law would die so that the family can flee Iraq. Instead he is pressured to fight for Iraq, the regime that he despises.

It is touching to see Ako form a friendship with two other men, making the war seem even more senseless. A comrade tells Ako that it was better to lose a leg for Kurdistan that a head for Iraq, and there is an eerie warmth to be felt when Ako sticks his leg up while lying in the trenches.

Ako’s determination turns into fortune when he is sent to deliver a martyr’s corpse back to his family. The Kurd-hating driver finally dumps Ako in the desert near an evacuated town, as the mutual tolerance they started out with turns to silly taunting on the basis of their different backgrounds. The film ends in France just over a decade after the Iraq’Iran war, where Ako and his wife are now living. They rejoice when they hear on the radio that Hussein’s regime has fallen.

Kilometer Zero is a heartfelt story of one family’s encounter with war. It is neither prejudiced, nor hate-filled, but rather shows the senselessness of hatred that is imbued in society by totalitarian rule.