One of the year’s best films, "Gunner Palace" excels in giving a clear voice to the American men and women fighting the current war in Iraq.

In September of 2003 documentary filmmaker Michael Tucker embedded himself with the members of the U.S. Army’s 2/3 Field Artillery Unit, which was based in Baghdad in the late Uday Hussein’s Al Azimaya Palace in the volatile Adhamiya section of the besieged capital city of Iraq.

This remarkable and deeply moving debut feature about the unit known as the Gunner Battalion is the result of astutely assembling over 300 hours of footage into an 85 minute film with Petra Epperlein, his co-director, producer and wife.

Tucker, a former member of the U.S. Army Reserve and the son of an Army Lt. Colonel who served three tours of duty in Vietnam, wanted to make a candid film from the point of view of the individuals actually doing the day-to-day fighting, and side-step the media managers.

"I asked the Army for permission and they set me up," said Tucker who worked directly with a brigade level public affairs officer in the field and not through the far more restrictive auspices of the Pentagon brass.

"During the invasion, network reporters were embedded from the Pentagon. They signed a contract that their film or tape could be censored and broadcast could be delayed or denied. That was not my relationship," said Tucker, who explained that he was never asked by the Army to have any of his footage reviewed.

"They saw me like a still photographer. I didn’t have a crew with me. There was no danger that I run out to the Green Zone and do an uplink. Their primary concern is operational. If an operation is going on, they don’t want it broadcast live."

For Tucker, a self-admitted Army brat, "Gunner Palace" offered a golden opportunity to capitalize on his upbringing to convey a vital contemporary message.

"My father got out of the Army when I was sixteen. At 17 I joined the Reserves and served from 1984 to 1990, so the first 23 years of my life were connected to the military. For this project, (my history) gave me a unique perspective and it probably helped with the access I gained just because I could walk the walk and talk the talk."

Tucker, who has been based in Berlin, Germany for the past ten years, selected the 2/3, which was later profiled by Time Magazine in the 2003 Person of the Year cover story, on the basis of location and potential for action.

"This unit was recommended by a friend who worked for Associated Press," said Tucker who originally wanted to work with a different unit he had met on a previous trip to Iraq in June while shooting footage for "Ali Baba," a still unfinished documentary film about a German armored car salesman.

"By September that unit had been spread out over many different sectors and the 2/3 sounded like a better choice, having a nice central place and a lot of soldiers and operations to pick from," said Tucker who also served as the film’s cinematographer and soundman.

The bombed-out palace, which also had a swimming pool and a miniature golf course, proved to be "very photogenic" and provided a prime roster of soldiers many with a strong interest in communicating through rock and rap music.

"I didn’t go in there thinking that (music) would be in any way important," admitted Tucker.

"And then I found these free-stylers and I realized they could express themselves so much better in rhyme than they could in an interview. Some of them really are talented and some of them are not so talented but all of them have something worth listening to.

" I wanted to humanize them, as personalities, which also meant showing their imperfections and their insecurities," said Tucker who still keeps in touch with many of his interview subjects.

"That is the strange thing with documentaries. It is not just a movie, it is somebody’s life."

Protective of his subjects, Tucker acknowledges that being directly put in harm’s way can be a good way to get to know someone.

"Your biggest worry are mortar and rocket attacks. Everyone was living there with hard cover over their heads. Depending on which month we were there, we had mortar and rocket attacks every other night. But amazingly, that was more a nuisance than anything. (The sound of) rifle grenades almost became background noise. The whole time (the 2/3) were there (in the palace compound), only two soldiers were wounded and they must have been attacked hundreds of times.

"Driving out on the street was something totally different. That was a very, very random, unpredictable violence (due to) the I.E.D’s, the improvised explosive devices. Those things go off all the time."

Tucker, who was working on a project to film animals and cultures around the world with his wife before the war in Iraq started, said he was initially un-intimidated by the potential of personal danger while filming "Gunner Palace.

"The first time I was there I was pretty acclimated to it. The insurgency was picking up speed but it felt relatively safe. When Time did the cover Person of The Year story on this unit, the writer and the photographer were both wounded. Someone threw a grenade through the back of their Humvee on Dec. 11, 2003. By the time I came back in February 2004, I was much more aware of serious risk."

While no one was seriously wounded or killed in this unit during filming, there were casualties when Tucker was not present that included some of his interview subjects.

"When you are around those guys, they don’t really live in fear. They worry but they keep on doing it and if you want to get their story you have to go with them out on the streets."

Unlike some documentary filmmakers and reporters, Tucker prefers not to make himself an integral part of the story.

"You want to be as invisible as possible," said Tucker.

"I have a tendency not to hold the camera at my shoulder, I hold it at my hip. Because you don’t want people to feel nervous about the camera being there."

Tucker, who was fired upon by a sniper one night, admits his opinions about the war in Iraq have changed radically over the course of making "Gunner Palace."

"I didn’t think when I started this that eight people connected to the film, whether Iraqis or Americans, would have been killed. It is hard to see things through a political lens after that. It becomes very, very personal in many different ways.

"The main thing that I saw was that you can’t look at something like this in black and white. It is really important to show how difficult this all is. You can’t make quick judgments, you have to feel what is going on."

In terms of the big picture, Tucker hopes his film stimulates increased interest of the American people into what is happening in Iraq.

"It is not so much that (our) country is divided, there is a group of people who are experiencing this, either as soldiers or their families, and there is a group of people that are watching it (on television). And there is a very, very big gap between those two parties. Most people can choose to turn it off, while the soldiers and their families can’t.

"It is a very complicated thing and I just hope if people see the film, no matter what they think about the war, that they just care about what is going on."

Although the film was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2004 to great acclaim, Tucker didn’t press for a U.S. release prior to the national elections in November due to what he felt was a glutted market.

"I have mixed feelings about that. I think the public was almost exhausted by all these political films that came out of that time period," said Tucker.

"War is always going to be political, but now is the time that people really need to care about what is going on. The election is over and people can’t let this war be forgotten."