Filmed during the battle of Kobani, this film reveals the women at the heart of the fight against IS. With stoical perseverance and the aid of American airstrikes, these women are leading the fight for freedom.
Social & External
Sivan Encü, a young Kurdish man, provided for his family by "smuggling" through the Turkish-Iraqi border. When he was murdered in the 2011 Robozik (Roboski) Massacre, the responsibility of family's welfare was taken over by his younger brother Sinan, who lost his life in an unfortunate accident. This is the story of their grief-stricken mother Heyam and her resilience. Alongside Heyam's struggle, the film brings the voices of Robozik elders and notables to the forefront, who have experienced first-hand the social, political and economic dimensions of smuggling, which has been the backbone of survival for the locals for many generations.
When a British-born actor abandons his Hollywood career to volunteer to Join the Kurdish YPG to fight ISIS in Syria, many see him as a selfless hero battling America's most insidious enemy. But others think he's a hot-tempered narcissist, staging a publicity stunt to further his career - and when his service ends, neither the UK nor the US welcome him back. Through incisive interviews with the actor, his supporters, his detractors, and top-tier experts - and featuring the actor's own jaw-dropping helmet-cam video of deadly battles with and interrogations of ISIS fighters - Heval gives viewers unprecedented access into a war against evil and one man's controversial role in it.
The Kurdish Iraqi poet and actor Zeravan Khalil travels with his dog through an Alpine gorge after fleeing from IS war and genocide. As he remembers the abomination, he writes a poem with the title “You drive me mad” in Kurmanji Kurdish. In his home country, Yazidic Kurds are forbidden to work in his profession. Then he eats his apple and wanders through Europe’s middle with more hope.
As the forces of ISIS and Assad tear through villages and society in Syria and Northern Iraq, a group of brave and idealistic women are taking up arms against them—and winning inspiring victories. Members of “The Free Women’s Party” come from Paris, Turkish Kurdistan, and other parts of the world. Their dream: To create a Democratic Syria, and a society based on gender equality. Guns in hand, these women are carrying on a movement with roots that run 40 years deep in the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey. GIRL’S WAR honors the legacy of Sakine Cansiz, co-founder of the PKK who was assassinated in Paris in 2013, and reflects on the sacrifices made by all of the women in the movement, who have endured jail, rape, war, and persecution in their quest to liberate their lives and sisters from male dominance. With scenes of solidarity, strength, and love amongst these brave women soldiers, GIRL'S WAR is a surprising story of Middle Eastern feminism on the front lines.
In 2013, Selim Yildiz spent 29 days with Kurdish soldiers (PKK) and made his first documentary 29.
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.
If Sidik manages to spot a leopard in his beloved mountains of Kurdistan, the area can be declared a protected nature reserve. Will that finally bring peace?
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.
Spearheading the 2017 battle for Raqqa against ISIS, the Kurdish forces of Rojava tried to put together a revolutionary political vision in the Levant: gender equality, self-determination, democracy, popular self-defense, anti-sectarism... But their democratic confederalism, built on mine fields and war economy, found itself struggling between imperialist foreign forces and Turkish nationalism.
“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.
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.
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.
Bakur (North) is a documentary that invites its audience to reflect on a war that has been continuing for decades and gives an insightful look on its main subject, the PKK. The film follows the lives of the guerilla in three different camps on the Kurdish region (north) that lies within Turkish borders.
Turkey's history has been shaped by two major political figures: Mustafa Kemal (1881-1934), known as Atatürk, the Father of the Turks, founder of the modern state, and the current president Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan, who apparently wants Turkey to regain the political and military pre-eminence it had as an empire under the Ottoman dynasty.
"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
Kurdistan, partitioned between Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, could play a major role in a torn Middle East. But who are the Kurds? What influence do they have? Who exactly is Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party? An enlightening investigation by Luis Miranda.
Aslı Erdoğan, world-renowned author and activist, has fallen into silence after she fled to Germany. Incomplete Sentences is a feature documentary on her literature and life, leading to exile in Frankfurt, after the Turkish regime’s oppression results in her unlawful imprisonment. Now, she struggles in exile while everybody is waiting for her to write again. Right after getting out of prison Aslı starts telling her story to the director, wandering in the streets of Istanbul she recites parts from her books and explains the stories behind. When Aslı goes to Germany to receive the Erich Maria Remarque Award she cannot return; thus her exile, which she likens to a semi-open prison, begins. As her health deteriorates and keeps her from writing, the tragedy in her books becomes her own reality.
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.
An old Kurdish man Hussein Mahmood who is a carpenter tries to make artificial legs for people who have lost their legs.
The story of this film is an aesthetic narration of the death of a Kurdish Family, along the 20th century.
Two working class youtubers ‘in the making’ enter an abandoned mansion to get their basketball back, and get lost inside while pranking each other. They record their ‘quick adventure’ with their phones for their audience, and tweak it with a fake phantom appearance to attract more followers to their YouTube channel. When uploaded the video goes viral, so they start a challenge: if the video reaches a certain number of views, they will enter the house again, at night, alone, totally unprotected. As fans react positively, they will do as promised, not only to discover and unveil the true nature of the place and their inhabitants, but to realize they might not be among the living anymore. Which opens a question - how far would you go to be famous?
A man lurks the night alleys, killing people at random, he feels nothing, no emotion, and no pain; when he meets a graceful widow he must confront what it means to be human.
A young alcoholic ambient musician locks himself in his apartment on a dangerous seven day bender as he attempts to finish his upcoming album.
When Crystal Wyatt was 16 her father passed away. From that time her life would never be the same. Crystal is banished from the family ranch, and starts a new life as a singer in a San Francisco nightclub.
Toni, a grumpy in his fifties, avoids children at all costs. His life changes when he suddenly has to take care of his sister's five adopted children, each from a different country. Toni will have to deal with new parenthood and cultural differences.
San Francisco filmmaker Konrad Steiner took 12 years to complete a montage cycle set to the late Leslie Scalapino’s most celebrated poem, way—a sprawling book-length odyssey of shardlike urban impressions, fraught with obliquely felt social and sexual tensions. Six stylistically distinctive films for each section of way, using sources ranging from Kodachrome footage of sun-kissed S.F. street scenes to internet clips of the Iraq war to a fragmented Fred Astaire dance number.
With only 24 hours left to live, a private investigator follows a trail of confounding clues to uncover the disappearance of his childhood friend.
While digging one of the many tunnels for the Moscow metro, Soviet workers unearth ruins of a dungeon. The site is closed, the metro tunnel is diverted, and amidst the bustle no one notices the tunnel workers’ foreman pocketing a little ‘souvenir’ – a book-sized frame made of precious metals featuring an inscription in an unknown language. Decades later, the foreman’s grandson Ilya, who works as a courier, discovers the ancient relic in a pile of old junk. Oblivious to the true value of the family heirloom, he soon learns about it from a mysterious stranger. The relic is the key to the secret location of the priceless ancient library that belonged to Ivan the Terrible. What Ilya doesn’t know is that the search for the lost library has been going on for centuries, and now very powerful people are after him. Ilya and the mysterious stranger decide to try their luck in finding the library.
A recap of Kimetsu no Yaiba episodes 15–21, with new footage and special end credits. Tanjiro, now a registered Demon Slayer, teams up with fellow slayers Zenitsu and Inosuke to investigate missing person cases on the mountain Natagumo. After the group is split up during a fight with possessed swordfighters, they slowly begin to realize the entire mountain is being controlled by a family of Demon spider creatures.
The brothers Sultan and Bekzat Ibrayev are serving faithfully in the Armed Forces of Kazakhstan, and at the same time they are in family disagreement. Sultan is a valiant intelligence officer and Bekzat is a talented fighter pilot. While an international terrorist organization prepares a carefully planned attack on the country's strategically important facilities, the brothers have to face not only a mortal threat, but also face a family confrontation related to their dead father. Circumstances force them to unite in order to save human lives, and the brothers eventually understand that their homeland and family are the most valuable thing they have.
To defend their kingdom against a sudden invasion, a mighty general returns to the battlefield alongside a war orphan, now grown up, who dreams of glory.
The blind swordsman, skilled in martial arts, named Cheng Xiazi (Xie Miao), accidentally saves Zhang Xiaoyu (Yang Enyou), who has suffered from the destruction of his family. Under the persuasion of the orphan Xiaoyu, Cheng reluctantly keeps him by his side and teaches him skills. Xiaoyu also waits for the opportunity to seek revenge.
Cartman's deeply disturbing dreams portend the end of the life he knows and loves. Meanwhile, the adults in South Park are wrestling with their own life decisions, as the advent of AI is turning their world upside down.
Freely inspired by the life of the actress Sandra Mozarowsky, who died in 1977 when she fell from the terrace of her house in Madrid, the story will focus on the day before the accident, in which loneliness, fear and anguish in the face of a situation desperate mix with his dreams and ambitions.
Light, color, and correlated sound. A program for the human nervous system.
The world has been reduced to rubble by a massive earthquake. While no one knows for sure how far the ruins stretch, or what the cause of the earthquake may be, in the heart of Seoul there is only one apartment building left standing. It is called Hwang Gung Apartments. As time passes, outsiders start coming in to Hwang Gung Apartments trying to escape the extreme cold. Before long, the apartment residents are unable to cope with the increasing numbers. Feeling a threat to their very survival, the residents enact a special measure.
Detective James Knight 's last-minute assignment to the Independence Day shift turns into a race to stop an unbalanced ambulance EMT from imperiling the city's festivities. The misguided vigilante, playing cop with a stolen gun and uniform, has a bank vault full of reasons to put on his own fireworks show... one that will strike dangerously close to Knight's home.
An expert hacker is targeted by a sentient AI after she realizes the threat it poses, and she must try to stay off its radar long enough to stop it.