The main part of Hiner Saleem's Kilomètre Zéro, premiered in competition for the Palme D'Or, is set in 1988 against the backdrop of the deaths of thousands of Iraqi Kurds at the hands of Saddam's cousin, "Chemical" Ali Hassan al-Majid.

It is framed by scenes of the main characters, now exiled in France, rejoicing at the fall of Baghdad in 2003.

"I am against war of any kind," Saleem said. "But we didn't have the luxury to say, 'For the time being, we will be exterminated'.

"If you say that the US is an imperialist country, then you are right. Had Sweden, Liechtenstein, France, come, it would have been wonderful. But they gave the US free rein; I am extremely pleased."

The scene of jubilation in the final moments of the film was "still valid. I would like to say I am optimistic, he said.

"The problem with Iraq is that it was not born of the will of a single people, but because Churchill wanted it. Power went to the people who had the most Kalashnikovs."

The story is set during the Iran-Iraq war. Ako, an Iraqi Kurd, goes out one morning in his pyjamas to buy bread. He is arrested by the Iraqi military and sent to fight on the dusty, brutal Iranian front in Basra.

One day he is ordered to accompany the body of a dead soldier as it is returned to the family. So he and an Iraqi Arab driver set off together across the unremitting landscape.

The film, partly funded by the Kurdistan regional government and partly from France, reads as a strong political statement of Kurdish identity.

Some also see it as anti-Arab, accusing it of presenting the driver as dimwitted and dominated by naive religious feeling.

Saleem responded: "The Arabs don't know the Kurds well. They forced us to study Arab history and culture. But they know nothing of our history, culture, sensibilities, dreams. An effort must be made by them to understand us."

He denied that the film was overtly political in its message: "You don't produce a film to draw people's attention to politics. I wanted to show the hills of Kurdistan, the faces of the people. I don't think I have produced a military or political film.

"It is not an ideological film. It doesn't say we are the most wonderful people on earth ... but I am thrilled people will be able to discover, to drive through Kurdistan for an hour and a half in this film."

Sami Shorashi, the Kurdistan regional government's culture minister, said: "This is a major step forward for the Kurdish people ... I see it as a work of art that well portrays the misfortune of the Kurdish people caused by the regime of Saddam Hussein."

Saleem, who has lived in France since the early 1980s and whose previous work includes Vodka Lemon, said the film was based on real events that happened to his brother.

The making of the film, he said, presented enormous practical difficulties. Because of the lack of indigenous film culture ("except for a few propaganda films"), technicians, crew and equipment had to be brought from France.