In the first film of an ongoing trilogy, this year’s True Vision Award winner explores some epic themes: betrayal, civil war and global imbalances of power. Poitras spent eight months in Baghdad, following a Sunni doctor in the run-up to Iraq’s compromised 2005 national elections. As an unembedded filmmaker, Poitras provides the viewer visceral evidence of a country under enormous stress and grief, of days filled with small but constant humiliations, mind-boggling tragedies, and unescapable fear and death. “The image can hold this pain,” she told one interviewer. (JS)