Mardik: Baghdad to Hollywood

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Baghdad-born screenwriter Mardik Martin looks back on a life as tumultuous as those of the memorable characters he created for some of Martin Scorsese's most stunning masterpieces, including Mean Streets and Raging Bull. Growing up in the capital of Iraq, Mardik Martin was captivated by the glamour of far-off Hollywood. But it was Manhattan that he first called home stateside, sent by his father to study business and economics at New York University. When a 1958 coup toppled the Iraqi monarchy, the ensuing turmoil back home meant Mardik was left to fend for himself, balancing his studies with his job as a busboy. It also, however, ensured sudden liberation from his family's expectations, and he soon enrolled in NYU's film school. There he met a young Scorsese, sparking a friendship that has spanned decades – and yielding the collaborative successes that inevitably led him to the city of his childhood dreams. But Mardik: From Baghdad to Hollywood does not end there. Via interviews not only with Mardik but with his colleagues, students and friends (including Scorcese), York depicts not only the triumphs their subject could never have predicted but the failures he never saw coming: no sooner was he on the rise than was his fall precipitated by the stuff of Hollywood tragedy – drug addiction. Without flinching from the blows Mardik endured, the documentarians go on to show the gradual comeback of a wistful and wise storyteller as he discovers a new calling: inspiring the screenwriters of the future as senior lecturer at one of the foremost film schools in the world, the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts.