Rojava, une utopie au cœur du chaos syrien
2017 · 45m · Documentary
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.
More Like This
Sara - My Whole Life Was a Struggle
2015
Documentary on Sakine Cansız (Sara), the Kurdish revolutionary and PKK co-founder killed in Paris in January 2013 by Turkish agents.
More info →
Baglar
2016
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.
More info →Experiment Rojava in Syrien. Eine Gesellschaft im Aufbruch
2019
A documentary on Rojava/North-East Syria and the social change there.
More info →
Monologue
2023
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.
More info →
Refugee Poetry
2016 · ★ 10
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.
More info →
Threads of a Revolution
2025
When artist Janet Biehl fell in love with radical American philosopher Murray Bookchin in the 1980s whilst editing his ground-breaking opus “The Ecology of Freedom”, she could never have imagined that it would one day take her halfway across the globe. Now, over 40 years later, Janet travels from America to the Middle East to witness something remarkable - how Murray’s ideas have ignited a female-led revolution in North-East Syria, where society is being rebuilt in the wake of victory over ISIS. Janet meets the women who are turning her late partner’s political theories into a modern reality, creating a grassroots communal democracy. Janet draws what she sees, and her illustrations capture the humanity of ordinary people in their struggle to self-govern. Now, at this critical moment for Syria and with this revolutionary project under renewed threat, "Threads of a Revolution" reveals a possible way forward for those prepared to fight for a new way to live.
More info →
The Legend of the Ugly King
2017 · ★ 7
Director Hüseyin Tabak explores the legacy of Yilmaz Güney — political dissident, convicted murderer, and visionary Kurdish filmmaker — who directed the 1982 Palme d'Or–winning Yol from inside prison and died in exile just two years later.
More info →
Shadow of the Kurdish Mountain
2019
Documentary on the Turkish invasion of Afrin in Northern Syria in 2018.
More info →
Sidik and the Panther
2019 · ★ 5.5
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?
More info →
The Many Lives of Kojin
2020 · ★ 5.4
In a first-person documentary, Diako Yazdani, a political refugee in France, returns to see his family in Iraqi Kurdistan and introduces them to a 23-year-old gay man from Kojin who seeks to exist in a society where he seems unable to find its place. With humor and poetry, the director delivers a moving portrait where the meetings of each other invite to a universal reflection on the difference.
More info →
From Atatürk to Erdoğan: Building a Nation
2019 · ★ 7
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.
More info →
detours while speaking of monsters
2024
Here, where even monsters are political, the topography has its own memory. It has the mythological blues. Meanwhile, old gods are upset with us, and I am upset with my father.
More info →