Manaf Talib

An actor born in 1940 in the city of Kut, he joined the Institute of Fine Arts, and after graduating from the acting department in 1965, he became an artistic supervisor in education in his city of Kut, and then he moved to Diyala to practice the same profession. In 1973, he received an invitation from the National Acting Troupe, which was founded by the artist Haqqi Al-Shibli in 1968, to be one of its members. His first participation with the troupe was through the play “Earth Anthem,” written by the artist Badri Hassoun Farid and directed by the artist Mohsen Al-Azzawi. From the theater, he moved to television, and his first work in the early seventies was the program “I Want to Cool My Dog,” prepared and directed by the artist Hamid Al-Atarqji. In 2006, he left Iraq, like other artists who left the country due to acts of violence, and settled in Syria to continue his artistic work, where he participated in most of the television series that were completed there, including: Sarah Khatoun, The Anonymous, A Wife Wanted Immediately, Dragging the Stairs, The Last Days of Summer, Al-Rusafi, The Crazy Nest, Love in India, The Smell of Reasonable People, and most recently the prison series “Nakrat Al-Salman,” which talks about the suffering of political prisoners and the period. The difficult times that Iraq went through. He also participated in many plays that were presented on theater stages in Damascus, in addition to directing two theatrical works. Artist Manaf Talib hopes to direct a theatrical performance that includes one hundred characters, in which he addresses the suffering of Iraqis over the past four decades, as well as performing the role of the well-known religious figure Rifa’a al-Tahtawi. During the interview conducted with him by Radio Free Iraq correspondent in Amman, Faiqa Rasool Sarhan, the artist Manaf Talib touched on the beginnings of his long career, especially when the Iraqi television studio was known as the Bankla. He died on Friday (June 26, 2020) after being infected with the new Corona virus that invaded the world.