Monologue(2023)

Beside Heroes(fr)

Wali, an ex-sniper, leaves Canada to fight the Islamic state. He meets two Americans: Rebaz and Zyrian. One is a veteran of the war in Iraq. The other is a homosexual idealist. They meet the Kurds, a welcoming people. Together, they will confront the fanatical Islamic terrorists. Beside Heroes, an uncensored documentary that tells the tale of three volunteer fighters who realized that to change the world, you have to act.

Turtles Can Fly(ku)

Turtles Can Fly tells the story of a group of young children near the Turkey-Iraq border. They clean up mines and wait for the Saddam regime to fall.

New Life(ku)

"Nû Jîn", New Life, with the slogan ' Woman is life. Life is resistance and resistance is Kobanê', depicts the daily life of women guerillas, Elif Kobanê (18), Vîyan Peyman and Arjîn, joining in the Women's Protection Units (YPJ) in their battle against ISIS. The documentary relates the ISIS assault of 15 September 2014 and the five-month resistance by the YPJ and People's Defense Units (YPG) through the lens of three women fighter

Well(ku)

In the 1990s many people in Kurdistan were taken into custody and interrogated under torture; their killers disposed of the bodies by throwing them out of helicopters, or burying them in acid-filled wells. Thousands were murdered/disappeared by paramilitary forces—such as Jitem and Hizbul-Kontra—that were financed and supported by the state, though they have always stuck to the line: “We didn’t do it.” The documentary looks at the case of seven people, including four children, who were disappeared from the town of Kerboran [Dargeçit] in 1995, and tells the story of their families’ tireless search for their bones

Lonely Trees(ku)

Darên bitenê is a fascinating documentary exploring the “dengbej” musical heritage of the singers, poets and storytellers from Northern Syria’s region. Featuring a stunning scenery of poetic landscapes, the film is interlaced with stories of Kurdish and Assyrian songs that narrate the long history of love and suffering of this semi-autonomous region.

American Herro(en)

American Herro is the remarkable story of a young Kurdish girl who comes to America as a refugee from Iraq and lives out the American dream. 30-years later, traveling the globe working for Condoleeza Rice, U.S. Diplomat Herro Mustafa invites her first American friend, filmmaker Kirk Roos, to visit Iraq and retrace her steps to freedom.

An Alley Behind Our House(ku)

The story of two youngster girls who became the victims of female genital mutilation.

Resistance(it)

In the panorama of Kurdish music, Koma Berxwedan (Group Resistance) is one of the most interesting, innovative, experimental groups. To a deep love for music research the group has always associated a strong political commitment. Some of its members have joined the PKK guerrillas in the mountains of Kurdistan. Three of them died in combat. Some have been forced to live in exile and others continued to challenge the Turkish authorities by carrying out their work in Kurdistan.

301(it)

Wild is the Spring(en)

Through a series of vignettes from the ancient and war-torn Levant, WILD IS THE SPRING captures moments in the lives of diverse ethnic communities who struggle to survive when life descends into chaos.

Posted by: İlhan Sami Çomak(tr)

The story puts İlhan Çomak at the center, even though he is not physically present in the film. It focuses on the 21 years that İlhan spent in prison and his family’s experience of those years without him. The narrative is constructed through the letters İlhan wrote and aims to describe his life, his emotions and longings. The film constructs İlhan’s history through a chronology in the prison but refrains from restricting it only to a “prisoner’s quest for justice”, and rather tells a story of the situations he finds himself in over the years and his emotions and their equivalents in life.

Çerx(ku)

In the 1990s, some newspapers were not allowed to enter the Diyarbakir region, under a state of emergency at that time, although they were legal. Children like Bawer and Hebûn, who were part of the distribution group, would secretly collect these newspapers from outside the city at a previously agreed location and take them to the planned meeting place in the city. There, the children changed their clothes and went out to distribute them, under the guise of other work. But they were constantly followed by those who saw the newspaper as dangerous and wanted to prevent its dissemination. Çerx is a testament to the conditions under which these newspapers were distributed to readers and the difficulties encountered.

Tokyo Kurds(ja)

In the 1990s, fearing persecution from the Turkish government, about 2,000 Kurdish refugees of Turkish nationality came to settle in a suburb of Tokyo. Here live Ohzan (18), Ramazan (19) and Memet (38). This documentary focuses on these three young Kurds in Japan.

Piyê Min Toz Şeker(ku)

The story of a father who has to smuggle granulated sugar home because of the embargo.

Die PKK in Europa - Freiheitskämpfer oder Terroristen?(de)

The Matchmaker(en)

A unique interview with Tooba Gondal, the woman who groomed and lured scores of Western women to join ISIS. Using social media, she became a deadly matchmaker, recruiting a number of high-profile “jihadi brides” for ISIS militants in Syria: she allegedly helped organise the transporting of three British schoolgirls, including Shamima Begum, to Syria.

Baglar(tr)

An underdog basketball team under the helm of an idealist school teacher from hard scrabble Diyarbakir in Southeastern Turkey goes beyond winning games in their mission to rise above prejudice, poverty and political turmoil created by the decades long conflict between the Turkish state and Kurdish rebels who are fighting for local autonomy and cultural rights.

Lost: Dengbej(tr)

Carpenter(ku)

An old Kurdish man Hussein Mahmood who is a carpenter tries to make artificial legs for people who have lost their legs.

A Time for Drunken Horses(fa)

After their father dies, a family of five children are forced to survive on their own in a Kurdish village on the border of Iran and Iraq.