Conceived to revitalize post-9/11 Lower Manhattan, the Tribeca Film Festival has burgeoned into an inclusive glitterati event recently called “the festival that ate New York.” It stands to reason that, among this fifth year’s 274-feature, 40-country, 12-venue lineup, there will be controversy, super-hyped or -star entries and a variety of lesser-known works. Among the small fry that may go overlooked, and definitely should not be, is the unnerving North American-premièring The Blood of My Brother.

Shot in HD CAM as one of two Iraq documentaries by Brooklyn filmmaker and still photographer Andrew Berends, the eighty-four minutes here immerse the viewer in a sorry scary reality beyond anything the popular media will venture. Indeed, noting that peril for journalists has increased since he did this film working out of a raggedy Oldsmobile, the director/cinematographer himself reasons that neither he nor anyone else “unembedded,” i.e., independent and not official, will gain such access or risk it for a long while. In several places one fears for the man and his translator and driver’s safety and marvels at their courage, comparable to that of Scott Dalton and Margarita Martínez in their La Sierra coverage of undeclared warfare in Medellín.

There are two threads in this film. Whether Ibrahim’s segues all that neatly into the militant Mehdi Army Shia movement of cleric Sayid Moqtada al-Sadr, or the two are ultimately disparate complements through contrast as well as kinship, or whether, on the other hand, here are really the makings of separate studies, will vary from viewer to viewer. But the actual result does not feel overstuffed, and, unified by an emotional wallop, it produces a totality of effect.

On video film corner-dated 04/10/04, Ibrahim’s older brother, friend and surrogate father in the fatherless family, is buried amidst the mother, two sisters and other black-robed women’s wailing and physically demonstrated grief. On the 9th, after inaugurating his long-dreamed-of photo shop, Ra’ad had volunteered to serve among the guards at ancient Kadhimiya mosque. “Afraid of guns” and so unarmed -- companion Moayid had the rifle -- he is killed by three American bullets, another of the numberless deaths where men are scared, confused, brainwashed and carry weapons.

The fallen brother’s politics are not delved into, but he is seized upon as a martyr, the cortège becoming another occasion for demagogic saber-rattling and anger. Suddenly the man of the family despite help from Ali, Ibrahim must console and care for the three women, which means running the new, soon-failing shop and, it turns out, repaying a quarter-of-a-million-dinar loan. He speaks about militancy, revenge and hatred of “Americans and Jews,” but the business and duty bind him: “Maybe God is not satisfied with me. He didn’t grant me martyrdom.”

The beardless teenager’s restraint, however, seems in character, his relatively calm demeanor a counterpoint to the mounting insurgent frenzy and rhetoric which take over both Baghdad and the film. Sequences are unique, amazing and frightening, of thousands praying vehemently to Allah, of rallies and weapons-brandishing boasting, of frequent street skirmishes and a demonstration march dispersed in a cascade of gunfire, and of grainy armored U.S. troops inside brontosaurus tanks and Humvees  Sometimes the camera runs, too, to keep up or, sensibly, flee, jumpily recording indistinguishable street surfaces or walls.

Throughout, there are birds, mostly pigeons, and, Joseph-like, mother sadly interprets her own dream about a pair of them. A sheep is sacrificially slaughtered and fish gutted alive -- not for the squeamish --as the film captures markets, homes, meals, gatherings, flashlit roundups and torched vehicles and bewildered Iraqis who cry, “Americans bombed us while we were in the house. I don’t know if they are helping us or not.”

Sorrow for a son, a brother, for fathers and mothers and wives and children, ripples out. Commendably without editorializing, you are there, intimately, and, with the photographer’s instinct, images tell their story: the final fish-eye of a blanketed corpse, the stares of wounded kids in a hospital or, one that sticks, a beautiful black-robed girl’s tears for her unseen dead mother and wounded father. The faces of grief, and all human to haunt us. 

(Released by LifeSize Entertainment; not rated by MPAA.)