A Flood in Baath Country (Arabic: طوفان في بلد البعث, romanized: Toufan fi Balad al-Baath) is a Syrian documentary film by the director Omar Amiralay, released in 2003 and premiered in 2004 at the Beirut Cinema Days Festival.

The film, Amiralay's last, criticizes the Baa'thist regime in Syria, particularly the Tabqa Dam construction project and the party's impact on political life and education in the country.

"[12] When doing research for A Flood in Baath Country, Amiralay came to believe that the dam was not constructed to generate power, but to protect the regime from the possibility that Turkey would restrict Syria's water supply.

He was also particularly incensed to learn that the site submerged by Lake Assad was "the place where human beings became farmers for the first time, and left the hunting-and-gathering stage, eleven thousand years before Christ.

Al-Roumi notes that many of the film's subjects believed that the documentary was being made for "an official institution", which led them to "exaggerate their glorification of the Baath Party and the leader" in their interviews.

[15][11] In footage from a rural village elementary school, whose principal Khalaf is Diab al-Mashi's nephew,[5][16] children mouth and chant Baath slogans in praise of the president by rote, such as "We are the voice of the proletariat.

[22][23] The film employs long shots and close-ups, in contrast to the "unusual cinematic punctuations" including freeze-frames, repeated motifs, and distorted angles used in Amiralay's earlier Everyday Life in a Syrian Village (1974).

Samirah Alkassim writes that A Flood in Baath Country "shows water to be an allegory for policies of erasure that require the people's indoctrination to ensure their compliance".

[24] Chantal Berman describes the "oft-repeated signature shot" of the film as an "excruciatingly slow" passage through a doorway, which she finds claustrophobic in imitation of "circumscribed political vision".

[18] Nathalie Khankan writes of the film's cinematography: "Amiralay's camera is patient, frames are carefully composed, the view is quietly panoramic.

[29] Following reported political pressure, the 2004 Carthage Film Festival in Tunisia cancelled plans to screen A Flood in Baath Country.

[33] In response to the backlash, Attia relented and re-admitted the film to be shown a single time, outside of official competition and on the final day of the festival.

[35] A Flood in Baath Country had its North American premiere at the 2005 Tribeca Festival, where it was shown alongside Film Essay on the Euphrates Dam.

[7] Following the September 2006 broadcast of A Flood in Baath Country by Al Arabiya, which was also seen by Syrian viewers,[39][40] Amiralay was detained at the Jordan–Syria border as he attempted to travel to Jordan to work on a film that same month.

[39][41] In protest, a screening of A Flood in Baath Country, featuring a debate and an introduction from writer Farouk Mardam Bey, was held in France on October 31, 2006.