"Don’t you get it? This war isn’t what it said on the tin.”

This powerful, compelling drama traces the fraught interwoven journeys of three British soldiers who take part in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, return to Manchester, but are then inspired to revisit the chaos of Basra.

Danny, Mike and Hibbs, friends in the same army regiment, have their own very different reasons to return: Danny (Stephen Graham) sees rich financial pickings in private security work, in a land awash with billions of dollars of reconstruction money, Mike (James Nesbitt) has fallen in love with Iraqi doctor Aliyah, and Hibbs (Warren Brown) goes back because he believes in the mission to rebuild the country and help the Iraqi people.

Life in the new Iraq however is unpredictable, chaotic and dangerous. Over the course of five years, the friendship of the three men comes under fierce pressure, as they pursue their dreams against the backdrop of growing fundamentalism, sectarian violence, and corruption in the world of privatized security.

Occupation is a darkly humorous and emotionally involving story, which slowly builds to a gripping and moving finale, as their conflicting ambitions come to define not just their own lives, but the war and the occupation of Basra itself.

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