All films

A coming-of-age documentary that follows the inner life of Ibrahim, a 21-year-old nursing student and young dervish in Iraqi Kurdistan, through folk …

D A Song for Love

Hogir Hirori202685 min

A disabled couple who want to start a family turn to adoption in the hope of offering a loving home. The short documentary won Best Kurdish Documenta…

D Rojin’s Dream

Serwa Aliveysi202434 min

BÎR / FILM2023

All the Mountains GiveArash Rakhsha

CINEMA / MEMORY / STORY↗

The documentary follows kolbars carrying goods across the Iraq–Iran border. Hamid and Yaser’s stories bring the cost of mountain labour and the strug…

D All the Mountains Give

Arash Rakhsha202390 min

BÎR / FILM2022

Angels of SinjarHanna Polak

CINEMA / MEMORY / STORY↗

Hanifa, a Yazidi woman who survived ISIS’s 2014 attack on Sinjar, risks her life in ISIS-held territory to find her five younger sisters, abducted an…

D Angels of Sinjar

Hanna Polak2022106 min

The documentary combines interviews with detained ISIS members and their wives in Syrian Kurdistan with images of a landscape after war. It examines …

D Rojek

Zaynê Akyol2022127 min

BÎR / FILM2021

SabayaHogir Hirori

CINEMA / MEMORY / STORY↗

The documentary follows a group who risk their lives to rescue women held captive by ISIS in the al-Hol camp. Shot and edited by Hogir Hirori himself…

D Sabaya

Hogir Hirori202190 min

Andriy, son of a Kurdish family that fled the war in Syria for Ukraine, delivers aid in the war in Ukraine as a Red Cross volunteer while trying to b…

D This Rain Will Never Stop

Alina Gorlova2020104 min

Most of the men of Xalko, the Kurdish village where Sami Mermer was born, have left as refugees; the women who remain keep daily life and tradition g…

D Xalko

Sami Mermer, Hind Benchekroun2018100 min

BÎR / FILM2017

MeteorsGürcan Keltek

CINEMA / MEMORY / STORY↗

Combining archive footage with interviews and dreamlike scenes, the film answers the political situation in Turkey’s Kurdish region in a language bet…

D Meteors

Gürcan Keltek201784 min

BÎR / FILM2017

The DeminerHogir Hirori, Shinwar Kamal

CINEMA / MEMORY / STORY↗

Built from footage Kurdish colonel Fakhir Berwari shot himself during years of clearing mines and roadside bombs in post-Saddam Iraq, the documentary…

D The Deminer

Hogir Hirori, Shinwar Kamal201783 min

Zaynê Akyol’s documentary approaches the everyday lives, conversations and shared time of Kurdish women fighters, placing public struggle alongside p…

D Gulîstan, Land of Roses

Zaynê Akyol201686 min

Shot between July and December 2015, the documentary follows Peshmerga fighters along the roughly thousand-kilometre front line between Iraqi Kurdist…

D Peshmerga

Bernard-Henri Lévy201692 min

In Kobanî, freed from ISIS, 20-year-old Dilovan starts a radio station. Her broadcasts with survivors, returning refugees and musicians become the vo…

D Radio Kobanî

Reber Dosky201670 min

Back in Iraqi Kurdistan to film people fleeing ISIS, Hogir Hirori is about to board a helicopter for Mount Sinjar when he finds 11-year-old Souad lyi…

D The Girl Who Saved My Life

Hogir Hirori201679 min

BÎR / FILM2015

Life on the BorderKobanî ve Şengal kamplarından sekiz çocuk

CINEMA / MEMORY / STORY↗

Eight children who fled ISIS to the refugee camps of Kobanî and Sinjar spend seven months learning camera and storytelling, then film their own lives…online

D Life on the Border

Kobanî ve Şengal kamplarından sekiz çocuk201573 min

BÎR / FILM2015

The Longest RunMarianna Economou

CINEMA / MEMORY / STORY↗

Jasim and Alsaleh, two under-age Kurdish refugees held in a Greek juvenile prison on smuggling charges: their friendship, their phone calls to famili…

D The Longest Run

Marianna Economou201555 min

Between documentary and fiction, the film follows two people in Iraqi Kurdistan: Nariman, a pilot trying to start a flight school for the young, and …

D A Flag Without a Country

Bahman Ghobadi201597 min

The children in a primary-school class photo of screenwriter İrfan Aktan meet again some twenty-five years later at a village wedding in Yüksekova, a…

D The Children Chasing the Rainbow

Dilek Gökçin201360 min

Ibrahim Gezer, a Kurdish beekeeper who lost his wife, two of his children and more than five hundred hives in the conflict in Turkey, starts keeping …

D The Beekeeper

Mano Khalil2013107 min

BÎR / FILM2011

Halabja – The Lost ChildrenAkram Hidou

CINEMA / MEMORY / STORY↗

Ali, lost as a baby in the 1988 Halabja gas attack and raised by a family in Iran, returns to Halabja twenty-one years later, and five families hope …

D Halabja – The Lost Children

Akram Hidou201172 min

Clarisse Hahn travels with her Kurdish-born partner Oktay, whom she met in Paris, to his family’s village, and looks, often with dark humour, at how …

D Kurdish Lover

Clarisse Hahn201095 min

BÎR / FILM2009

The Last Season: ShawaksKazım Öz

CINEMA / MEMORY / STORY↗

A documentary following one season in the life of the nomadic Shawak tribe of eastern Turkey as they take their flocks to the summer pastures: herds,…

D The Last Season: Shawaks

Kazım Öz200993 min

A Turkish-speaking teacher and Kurdish-speaking pupils try to establish a shared language in one classroom. The documentary approaches language in ed…online

D İki Dil Bir Bavul / On the Way to School

Orhan Eskiköy, Özgür Doğan200881 min

On a journey from Hamburg to Stockholm, on to Turkey and the Makhmour camp in Iraqi Kurdistan, Yüksel Yavuz sets his own story of emigration beside t…

D Close-Up Kurdistan

Yüksel Yavuz2007104 min