Encounters on the Tigris follows a journey taken by artist and filmmaker Sherko Abbas in 2022, along the ancient Tigris river, in search of previously undocumented oral traditions and the ecological knowledge they hold. Beginning in Faysh Khabur in an ancient Christian church, we learn how the Tigris acted as a protective shield for communities living near Iraq’s unstable borders. Abbas then travels to Mosul to an ISIS destroyed neighbourhood where locals share folktales commonly told to children about the river, and some of the historic buildings on the riverbank, before ending this leg of the journey in Samarra where fishermen lament the river’s depletion by drought.

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