Directed by Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva Oelbaum, Letters from Baghdad tells the extraordinary story of Durham-born Gertrude Bell, sometimes called the “female Lawrence of Arabia”.
A brilliant explorer, writer, archaeologist, and British secret service agent, Bell was one of the most powerful women in the British Empire at the turn of the 20th century and played a pivotal role in shaping the modern political map of the Middle East.
Led by Academy Award-winner Tilda Swinton, the documentary brings Bell to life using her own words, meticulously drawn from her voluminous letters, diaries, and official secret correspondence. By blending these intimate writings with stunning, unseen archive footage of the region and dramatised testimonies from her contemporaries, the film offers a complex, beautifully textured portrait of a brilliant outsider who navigated a fiercely male-dominated world of high-stakes diplomacy.