Available from APT Exchange and airing on PBS for Arab American Heritage Month (April 2025)
Directed by Mike Mosallam
Written by and Starring Heather Raffo
Produced by Nilou Safinya
One woman, nine stories.
NINE PARTS brings to life the stories of Iraqi women – ordinary and extraordinary – in a new film adaptation of the internationally acclaimed solo-show.
Set in Michigan at the height of the pandemic, an Iraqi American torn by her father’s death – and by a divided nation – attempts to grieve at the site of the oldest Iraqi church in North America. What starts in isolation becomes communal as Iraqi women come to and through her with personal stories of love and resilience.
A first of-its-kind bridge between the Midwest and the Middle East, NINE PARTS offers a unique celebration of the Iraqi female experience.
“An example of how art can remake the world.”
“Powerful, Impassioned, Vivid, Memorable!
“Persuasive precisely because it is beautiful.”
HISTORY
Nearly 20 years ago Heather Raffo’s play, Nine Parts of Desire, premiered to widespread acclaim in London and Off-Broadway, later becoming a global theatrical phenomenon. Championed by The New Yorker as “an example of how art can remake the world”, itbecame the first theatrical commercial success nationally and internationally by an Arab American Playwright.It initially premiered in the UK in 2003, where critics hailed it as one of the five best plays in London’s Off West End theater season. Later, it ran Off Broadway for nine sold out months and was a critic’s pick (of the New York Times, Time Out and Village Voice) for over 24 weeks in a row”.Since 2005, Nine Parts of Desire has been produced in nearly every theater market in the U.S. and was one of the top five most produced plays of the 2007-2008 American Theater season with international productions in over a dozen countries, some being performed to this day.Now studied in universities across the nation, Nine Parts of Desire helped forge a whole new genre of Arab American theater and continues to impact new generations globally, offering audiences not only a deeper understanding of their relationship to the Middle East but to each other.
