Monologue

Elaha

November 2023 •German

Elaha, 22, believes she must restore her supposed innocence before she weds. A surgeon could reconstruct her hymen but she cannot afford such an operation. She asks herself: why does she have to be a virgin anyway, and for whom?

Piyê Min Toz Şeker

September 2016 •Kurdish

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

Momê

September 2020 •Turkish

A Kurdish woman as a suspect of terrorism: the exciting political thriller deeply depicts the racist surveillance system in Turkey. The young Kurdish woman Arjin is under surveillance by the Turkish intelligence service. Her offense: She housed another Kurdish woman for one night, who then disappeared without a trace. Every step of Arjin and her friend Sidar is monitored from now on. When Ramo, a secret service worker of Kurdish origin, claims to have found evidence that Arjin and Sidar are involved in the planning of a suicide bombing in Istanbul, the ugly face of the Turkish government is uncovered.

Black Box Syria: The Dirty War

October 2020 •German

A look back over nine years of the Syrian Civil War, an inextricable conflict, like a black box, due to the competing interests of the many factions in presence and those of the foreign powers.

Scud Patriot

November 2013 •Kurdish

Come to My Voice

December 2014 •Turkish

In a snowy Kurdish mountain village, in the east of Turkey, an old woman Berfé and her granddaughter Jiyan are distressed. The only man in the household, Temo, the son of one and the father of the other, was arrested by the Turkish military. The commanding officer has been told that the villagers are hiding weapons, so he arrested all the men and announced that they will be kept in prison until their families hand over the weapons. The problem is that there are no weapons in the village. Desperate, Berfé and Jiyan embark on a long journey, in search of a gun which they could exchange for their beloved Temo. Will the old woman and her innocent granddaughter find a way out of the inextricable Kurdish identity conflict?

A Time for Drunken Horses

September 2000 •Persian

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.

Binxet - Under the border

May 2017 •Italian

“Binxet – Under the border” is a journey between life and death, dignity and pain, struggle and freedom. It takes place along the 911 km of the turkish-Syrian border. On the one hand the ISIS, in the other Erdogan’s Turkey. In the middle the borders and one hope. This hope is called Rojava, only one point on the chart of a troubled region, a region of resistance and an example of grassroots democracy that speaks about gender equality, self-determination of peoples and peaceful coexistence.

The Last Season: Shawaks

July 2009 •Kurdish

"The Last Season: Shawaks" revolves around an extended Shawak family whose life is marked by seasonal migration.

Holy Bread

March 2022 •Kurdish

A documentary on the precarious lives of the koolbari, who carry goods on foot across the mountainous borders from Iran's northwestern Kurdish region.

This Rain Will Never Stop

September 2022 •Ukrainian

This Rain Will Never Stop takes the audience on a powerful, visually arresting journey through humanity’s endless cycle of war and peace. The film follows 20-year-old Andriy Suleyman as he tries to secure a sustainable future while navigating the human toll of armed conflict. From the Syrian civil war to strife in Ukraine, Andriy’s existence is framed by the seemingly eternal flow of life and death.

We Called Him the Ugly King

January 1987 •Turkish

A mockumentary about Turkey-based Kurdish film director, scenarist, novelist, and actor Yilmaz Güney, shot three years after the filmmaker's death. It's also a political portrait of 20th century Turkey.

Turtles Can Fly

January 2005 •Kurdish

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.

Six Days

January 2013 •English

Three women, three wars, one dream. Lanja is a journalist in Iraq fearlessly fighting against honor violence. Maia in Abkhazia battles archaic customs like 'bride kidnapping'. Nelly runs a women's shelter in the slums of Monrovia, Liberia. A universal story of women's courage and survival in the aftermath of war.

Music of Yarsan: A Living Tradition

January 2015 •English

The educational documentary film Music of Yarsan: A Living Tradition is an investigation into the variety of muscial practices in the life of the Kurdish Ahl-e Haqq people of the Guran region, in the Kermanshah province of Iran.

Posted by: İlhan Sami Çomak

January 2016 •Turkish

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.

Sara - My Whole Life Was a Struggle

January 2015 •Kurdish

Documentary on Sakine Cansız (Sara), the Kurdish revolutionary and PKK co-founder killed in Paris in January 2013 by Turkish agents.

29

November 2014 •English

In 2013, Selim Yildiz spent 29 days with Kurdish soldiers (PKK) and made his first documentary 29.

Çerx

March 2022 •Kurdish

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

July 2021 •Japanese

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.