“Maku Mai” is a constant litany across every corner of southern Iraq. It means there is no water. What was once one of the most fertile regions of the country, a cradle of humanity and home to the last Sumerian community, the Ahwari, has become an extreme landscape. In 1991, Saddam Hussein ordered the marshes drained after a Shiite uprising, punishing the population and drying the wetlands almost entirely. Saddam fell more than twenty years ago, yet the situation has not recovered. It worsens day by day under drought, political pressure on water flows, and pollution.

Lamento Ahwari is an immersive documentary filmed in southern Iraq, built on time, proximity, and trust. Ignacio and Luay integrate into the daily life of several families and characters, staying long enough to truly know each person and to portray their reality from the inside. The camera follows routines, tensions, and silences without forcing explanations, allowing the place and its people to speak in their own terms.

Laabiye lives with her family on a kibasha, an artificial island, in the same way her ancestors once did. A mother of five, she holds the household together while her freedom narrows under social constraints and harsh conditions. Her deepest wish is to leave, but her situation makes escape almost impossible. Around her, other lives reveal the marshes’ broader collapse. Qassem and Sahiya, buffalo herders, face the worst drought in their history as upstream dams reduce the water that once sustained them, pushing them toward an imminent departure. Hashem and Halima remain in an abandoned settlement after their neighbors left, a last stand against a sterile government presence. Hussein lives beside a major oil facility, where contamination seeps into everyday life and reshapes the future of the entire south.

Through these intertwined stories, Lamento Ahwari captures the final wingbeats of a civilization threatened with disappearance. Modernity, environmental change, and extractive industry press in from all sides. The Ahwari endure, resilient but cornered, accepting a tragic horizon while still insisting on life.