‘If one of us is in trouble we go to their rescue,” says Jamal, at the beginning of The Fight for Mosul (Channel 4). They are words that will have sad personal resonance for him later on. Jamal is a sergeant with a special forces unit in the Iraqi army. Along with squad leader Anmar, Hussein, Amjad, Abbas and a few others. They were some of the first to go into Mosul last year to try to retake the city from Isis. With them was French film-maker Olivier Sarbil. This is embedded journalism at its most extreme, the more so when you find out he had no fixer or translator, and doesn’t speak Arabic. He just went along, pointed his camera at them, lived, ate and slept with them and tried not to die with them, as they slowly clawed back the city.

Track
0 trackers | Status: Released | Release Date: 2017-11-06 | Rating: 0