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My interviewee was close to tears. A tough former United States army officer, once lauded for the lethal effectiveness of his operations against Iraqi insurgents, he was finding it difficult to get his words out. He said his sole reason for talking to me was to persuade people who would watch my film to think twice about the wisdom of military intervention. War as an institution is pure evil, he told me. Its pure evil.

I had first visited Iraq in 2016 to meet Yazidi refugees fleeing Islamic State, the terrorist group which, at that time, controlled Mosul in the north of the country. I was filming a series of documentaries about the journeys of various refugees from their country of origin to their final destination.

Exodus took four years to make and was a success, but when it was finished, I couldnt get Iraq out of my mind. Having spent a lot of time with my subjects, I felt very connected to their situation. It wasnt just the plight of the Yazidis I was concerned about, it was the state of the whole country.

As with any situation, there are causes and effects going back a long way, but it seemed to me that the toppling of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator, in 2003 was as good a place as any to start. The falling of that domino led to the destabilisation of the region, and that led to refugees arriving in Europe and that, in turn, was one of the factors in the rise of far-Right nationalism.

Id hear those same far-Right nationalists blaming the refugees themselves for their own plight. Its their fault nothing to do with us. I found it infuriating; the equivalent of burning down someones house and then blaming them for living on the street.

I see the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation and civil war as the origin story for so much that is still affecting our lives. Hideously ironic, isnt it, that George W Bush and Tony Blairs pre-emptive strike to nip a supposed terrorist threat in the bud should have led directly to the creation of Isil?

I didnt want to make a regular documentary where I interviewed politicians, decision makers and the key players. I wanted to tell the story through the eyes of those whose lives were impacted and altered by those political decisions.

Miriam Walsh, our amazing archive producer, somehow dredged up around 13,000 film clips amounting to 800 hours of footage from 2003 and 2004 showing all kinds of stuff: street scenes, interviews, army activity, the aftermath of insurgent attacks, actual attacks. Much of it had never been seen before. And through the network of contacts I already had in Iraq, we were able to find some of the people featured in this archive and get some astonishing interviews.

Read more:
I hope viewers will reflect on the fact that the invasion of Iraq was utterly pointless - Telegraph.co.uk