Portland Documentary & eXperimental Film Festival

OCCUPATION: DREAMLAND is the melancholy portrait of a squad of American soldiers deployed in the doomed Iraqi city of Falluja during the winter of 2004. A collective study of the squad unfolds as they patrol a bewildering environment of low-intensity conflicts creeping steadily towards a catastrophic assault that effectively destroys the city. The filmmakers were given access to all operations of the Army’s 82nd Airborne and their film gives voice to soldiers held under a strict code of authority as they cope in an ambiguous, often lethal environment.

Garrett Scott is an award winning filmmaker, who recently returned to the US from Iraq, where he had been for almost a year shooting his Occupation: Dreamland. His film “Cul-de Sac: A Suburban War Story,” was a huge hit here at the 2002 PDX Film Festival, and we are excited to host him as a featured artist at this year’s festival. Garrett was featured prominently by Filmmaker Magazine as one of the “20 new faces in film to watch” in 2002. His directorial debut, Cul de Sac: A Suburban War Story, premiered at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival and has since screened around the world and broadcast on the Sundance Channel. In addition to Occupation: Dreamland, Garrett is working on a documentary about city politics in San Francisco in the 1970’s.

Garrett, who is a featured guest of the festival, will be present for screenings of Occupation: Dreamland and Cul de Sac, discussing the films and taking questions from the audience after the screenings.