A Jewish girl in 1946 Iraq runs away to Baghdad to become a nightclub singer until she's forced to choose between losing her voice or her life.

SYNOPSIS:

Basra, Iraq: In 1946, teenaged Samira Raby is a gifted singer but like all young girls from the Jewish community – like all young girls in Iraq – has to leave school and get married. As soon as she gets engaged to a widow, she’s warned he wouldn’t tolerate singing and she must stop. After she begs for one night of freedom, her brother takes her to a nightclub and lets her listen from outside, telling her to be extremely careful and confessing that the widow almost certainly killed his first wife. Filled with fear, she puts her emotions into song and is discovered by an impresario along with his kind mother. Samira blurts her fears about being engaged to the widow. The impresario and his mother offer Samira a job singing in Baghdad, and her brother agrees. He fakes her accidental drowning to cover for her escape. In Baghdad, Samira is given a stage name to keep her identity secret, since her family should kill her if they find out she broke the engagement. She falls in love across religious lines with Ra’ad, a talented oud player. But her growing fame even with the stage name leads her father to send her brother to find out if she’s in Baghdad, and, if she’s singing, to kill her. After her brother leaves for this journey, Samira’s scorned fiancé forces her father to follow to make sure that she’s dead. Her father and brother watch Samira perform and then try to confront her. The impresario intervenes, telling Samira he will make her an international sensation. Her father orders her back to Basra to live as a spinster. Her brother says she can marry one of the musicians in the band – never mind that she doesn’t love him – and have both a family and singing career. Samira runs off with Ra’ad. They drive to Transjordan, bribing the border guard to get in. Ra’ad and Samira arrive penniless but soon amass a following. At a club in Amman, they perform a song that plays over a shot of Samira’s old rooftop in Basra, where her father and brothers sleep under the stars.