Paul Greengrass is set to write and direct his next film looking right into the aftermath of the Iraq invasion. The film is based on a book by Rajiv Chandrasekaran called which looks into hundreds of interviews and internal documents to chronicle the attempts to bring democracy and stability to the country.

The story comes from Variety through Coming Soon and tells us that Chandrasekaran speaks with some authority as the Baghdad bureau chief of the Washington Post. According to the Amazon write up there are some shocking decisions that it chronicles, such as the appointment of a 24-year-old who had never worked in finance to revitalise Baghdad's stock exchange.

It'll be very interesting to see how Greengrass tackles this, as obviously the book covers so much material he's going to have to pick certain stories and viewpoints to bring forward. My guess is that he'll, like so many films just now and his own style, pick various individuals and situations to present weaving together to create this massive story.

However he manages it, we're sure to see a hard hitting and no holds barred portrayal of events, particularly after seeing his excellent United 93 (Filmstalker review).

One of his current projects is called They Marched Into the Sunlight, the story of the college campus protests against the Vietnam war which really blew up through the events in October 1967 when sixty one US soldiers were killed in a Viet Cong ambush and a student protest against Dow Chemicals. He's certainly continuing with a common idea.