Marwan al-Jubouri - Baghdad

In the summer of 1957, Iraqi television broadcasts started from Baghdad, and despite being the oldest in the Arab world, Iraqi drama has remained in place, with the exception of some sporadic works that have been described as "distinguished", while the Egyptian drama dominated the Iraqi screen, and was widely received by all Iraqis, Before its Gulf, Syrian, Turkish, and foreign counterparts rivaled it in recent years.

With the Iraqi space crowded with many TV channels in the past years, the movement of drama production returned to revive, after being the preserve of official television and the companies it deals with, during the decades that preceded the American occupation.

The drama that has emerged in recent years has been dominated by the comedic character, which exposed her to accusation of "insult", due to the way she addressed some issues, and her reliance on "undisciplined" irony, which affected groups of society, such as dwarves and the elderly.

As for the most prominent artwork this year, they were: “Bing Ami,” “As Motherland Dies,” “Ghayb in Wonderland”, “Dreams of the Years”, “One + One”, and other series.

Production problem
The former head of the TV drama department in the official Iraqi channel, Ridha Al-Muhammadawi, believes that the level of Iraqi drama for the year 2020 remains without ambition in terms of quantity and quality, with some good works, such as the series "Yakin Albyi", he said.

He adds to Al-Jazeera Net that the Iraqi drama's inability to compete with imported business is behind several reasons, foremost of which is the production crisis that the emergence of satellite channels after 2003 contributed to alleviating them, by eliminating the "government production complex".

However, the satellite channels that funded and produced dramas also began to suffer from scarcity of production, and the problem of financing came back again, especially after 2014 "when the global economic crisis occurred because of low oil prices."

On the tyranny of the comedic character of Ramadan works, and following the method of the dramatic series that are not related from the point of view; Al-Muhammaddawi attributed the reason to the productive side, because the satirical and light works do not need huge budgets, and through which expenses can be squeezed, time shortened, and dependence on limited numbers of actors.

Al-Muhammadawi: The level of Iraqi drama for 2020 is less than expected, qualitatively and qualitatively (Al-Jazeera)

The necessity of joint cooperation
As for Fares Tohme, director of the cinema and former theater department at the Ministry of Culture and a member of the Iraqi Drama Support Committee, he believes that "Iraqi drama is unable to compete with imported works due to the marketing crisis related mainly to the presence of a star actor."

But the Iraqi star is currently unable to market any business outside the borders of Iraq, due to many circumstances and accumulated problems, including the economic blockade in the nineties and then war and security unrest.

Tohma believes that the solution lies in opening horizons of cooperation with Arab artistic bodies, and producing joint works with the participation of Syrian, Egyptian, Gulf and other Arab nationalities, which can pump blood into the veins of Iraqi drama again and reintroduce it to viewers inside and outside Iraq.

Tohme: The solution is to produce joint business with other Arab countries (Al-Jazeera).

Taboos and dangers
The episodes of a number of Iraqi series that have recently presented various reactions, ranged from great welcome and condemnation of the way it deals with local reality.

The producers of the "Bing Ami" series, which discusses social problems in a comic framework, were forced to delete one of its episodes on YouTube, due to what was considered abuse in dealing with the tragedy of the Yazidian Sibaya by the Islamic State.

As for the author of "Dreams of the Sunnis," he apologized to an Iraqi tribe, after he was accused of insulting it, by taking up the series the story of a rural area in southern Iraq suffering from feudal domination.

And among religious and social taboos, Iraqi drama continues to falter, says art critic critic Ziad Tariq, who believes that dealing with these issues is a major obstacle in a society where the clan and religious institutions prevail.

Iraq also lacks professionals in the drama industry, and suffers from the absence of academic experiences, in addition to the attempt of the production parties to cope with the general taste through works characterized by "lying and falling", and simulating the uneducated majority of viewers, as he put it.

And Tariq points out that there is no media system concerned with the affairs of Iraqi artists, in terms of monitoring content, guaranteeing rights and providing protection, "whether from the productive institution itself or religious and clan entities."

Low wages
The director of the Mesopotamia Theater Omar Ziauddin describes the wages of Iraqi artists as "miserable", especially when compared to the wages of their Syrian counterparts, for example, and whose wages are ten times higher than Iraqi artists ’fees, stressing that responsibility is borne by the state and the artists’ union together.

Dia El-Din indicates that the wages of Iraqi actors are determined by personal relationships and patronage, and that there is great injustice that affects young artists who do not find their opportunity, due to the recurrence of old faces, in addition to the financial problems they face on a personal level.

And not only that, but there is a shortage of distinguished dramatic texts that contain ideas and treatments through which the imported drama can compete, and get rid of the repetition of faces and weak topics and the slow pace in these works.

According to the director of Al-Rafidain Theater, Iraqi satellite channels until 2006 were producing at least 3 or 4 dramas in a year, which provided good opportunities for Iraqi artists to appear on television, but the frequency of production has declined a lot in recent years, which added a new burden to the Iraqi artist .