Duniya Journal

by Imtiaz Popat

Atropia currently playing streaming on MUBI is a satire about a real, fake place. Hailey Gates’ new movie is based on military training camps in the American desert that simulated war zones in Iraq.

The film is written and directed by Gates in her feature-length debut and starring Alia Shawkat alongside Callum Turner, Zahra Alzubaidi, Tim Heidecker and Chloë Sevigny, Atropiafollows an aspiring actress (Shawkat) working for a military role-playing facility.

“Alia and I were both really frustrated still about the Iraq War and felt like it deserved some reexamining,” Gates told Newsweek. She and Shawkat are both California natives, with her being from LA and Shawkat from Palm Springs.

Gates is an actor, director and journalist with a background in documentary making, and the Atropia project was originally approached as a documentary before evolving into an unreal satire. The film moves between English and Arabic, something Gates said was important as it is “a reality of the simulation.”

The Iraq War lasted from 2003 to 2011, beginning with the invasion of Iraq by a U.S.-led coalition, which ultimately resulted in the overthrow of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s government.