It was an emotional night for Vice?s bad boys of hard journalism.  Don?t get the wrong idea:  for a documentary on Iraq, Heavy Metal in Baghdad rocked Saturday?s world premiere.  The story of Acrassicauda, Iraq?s lone heavy metal ensemble, is told with a ballsy levity that young audiences will eat up.  Yet it?s the most revealing glimpse into Iraq I?ve seen.  They may be laid-back dudes, but co-directors Suroosh Alvi and Eddy Moretti offer up more truth and compassion than any flack-jacket wearing doofus from the mainstream media ever has or will. 

Sadly, the ?all-around good guys? of Acrassicauda couldn?t get into Canada for the premiere.  Despite their best efforts they had a nasty run-in with a dickish Canadian embassy official.  A passionate Moretti read this quote from drummer Marwan Reyad in Raju Mudhar's Toronto Star article: "They made me feel like a terrorist ... I said, let me defend myself. This is the moment of our lives; this is a film we all want to watch, more than any other person down there. It's been an eight-year fucking journey down there, and we lived through the threats. People calling us Americanized, saying that they were going to kill us.?

Moretti weighed in:  ?The Canadian government hasn?t particularly gone out of their way to help these guys.  The American government obviously hasn?t gone out of their way to help these guys, but if you could vote for this film you?d be voting for four really great guys who don?t deserve to be suffering like they are right now.?

The band?s former lead singer Walid Rabiaa, who moved to Canada on a student visa, was in attendance.  He stood humbly when Moretti drew attention to him, and received a roar of applause from a sold-out audience at the ROM.  Later, the filmmakers spoke with Rabiaa for the first time, made plans to hang out and hugged.  After all, Barricuada were more than doc subjects to Alvi and Moretti, they were friends.  Rabiaa told them seeing his friends in the film had made him cry for ?the first time in three years,? and that they had told an important story.

Here are a few Q and A moments:

Suroosh Alvi:  We?d like to thank TIFF for writing a really nice letter of invitation to the band to come to Canada.

Audience Member:  How is the band doing now?

Eddie Moretti: We?re in touch with the band everyday. They are having a really hard time, the Syrian government three days ago issued a statement that they were going to start sending Iraqis back to Iraq, and everybody with an Iraqi passport had to get there visa renewed every two months, our guys have about a month left on their visa and they?ll be shipped back to Iraq.  Obviously this can?t happen and they can?t be shipped back to Iraq or they?ll die.  We?ve set up a website?we?re trying to get some money together to get them out of the country?. I think the challenge to us as filmmakers was to try and communicate their story and situation, and maybe in some small way let you guys see a little bit of what has been going on in Iraq on a massive scale.  We?re talking maybe two million people displaced internally, two million displaced outside the country.  This is the world?s fastest growing refugee crisis and I think maybe we can do something about it.

Audience Member:  Why no happy ending?

Eddie Moretti:  How about a sequel maybe.  We?re talking to a lot of bands and System of a Down has interest in these guys.  It?s a struggle, they?re on Slayer and Metallica?s radar.  The goal is to get them out to America.

Audience Member:  I was recently filming in the middle east, I noticed the scene discussing how the Sunni ? Shiia conflict was embellished by the media?  How is that rift changing since initially?

Eddie Moretti:  I think this is a political play that?s happening on a level that can?t be generalized in terms of Sunni vs. Shiia or Shia vs. Sunni, it?s just born of a power vacuum.  America went in there, destabilized the country, there was no reconstruction effort, there was but it went into the pocket of Haliburton.  Americans got rich of the rape of Iraq.  The power vacuum left everyone fending for themselves.  It turned into utter chaos.  It?s like every man for himself.  Various familial or tribal factions around the country try to scrape together little power enclaves to get a little of whatever is to come in the future.

Suroosh Alvi:  I think the sectarian violence exists now, but didn?t exist in the old Iraq. Acrassicauda represents Iraq because there?s a Shiia, a Sunni and a Christian playing metal together harmoniously; having no problem being different sects.  Because of the brain drain, and the chaos and violence in the streets, now there are Sunnis and Shiia?s in sectarian violence.

Audience Member:  What inspired you to make this film?

Eddie Moretti:  These guys touched us as friends.  When we started putting the film together, we realized we had to tell this story.  Executive Producer Spike Jonze, when they saw a first cut of the film they said we need to tell this story, we need people in the world like you (audience) to know these are good people who are suffering, who?s lives have been completely destroyed who have nothing left.