The Kurdish Film Festival (DKFF) in Germany’s Düsseldorf featured a host of Kurdish films with a spotlight on the Yazidi community during a four-day event, ending in an awards ceremony over the weekend.
Directors and filmmakers were honoured as special guests, acknowledged for their contributions to a raised awareness of regional human rights issues and the preservation of the Kurdish culture and language under oppression.
Reger Azad Kaya won the Halil Dağ Resisting Cinema Award for his film Gava Şiril Mezin Dibin (When the Seedlings Grow). The moving documentary-style picture follows a day in the life of a father and daughter in Kobani (Kobanê), a northern Syrian town sieged by Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014 and liberated by women-led Kurdish forces. Present day war-stricken characters live in the atmosphere of the Rojava Revolution, civilians battling with the constant threat of attacks from Turkish proxies.
The award is presented in remembrance of journalist Halil Ibrahim Uysal, later known as Halil Daĝ, a German-born film director known for dedicated reporting on the Kurdish movement.
Maria Binler received the festival’s Human Rights Award for Eren. Eren Keskin is a prominent award-winning human rights defender in Turkey, advocating for women, LGBTQIA+ and minority rights, against torture and sexual violence. She sits as vice-president of Turkey’s Human Rights Association (İHD) and faces life imprisonment for her professional activities. The film documents her fight.
Director Derya Deniz was awarded the Jîna Emînî Award for Hêza, a film documenting the escape of a Yazidi woman from ISIS captivity, enslaved during the attack of the extremist group on northern Iraq’s Sinjar (Şengal) in 2014. The award is presented in honour of Jîna (Mahsa) Amini, the Kurdish-Iranian woman who became a worldwide symbol of resistance and liberation after her brutal death at the hands of Iranian security forces in 2022.
In the short film category, four awards were presented representing Kurdish-majority regions of Turkey (Bakur), Kurdish-led North and East Syria (Rojava), Kurdistan Region of Iraq (Başûr) and Kurdish-Iranian regions known as Rojhilat.
Bêrîvan Saruhan won the award for her work Stêrka li Ser Xetê (Star on the Line), Gulê Welat was awarded for Xewn (Dream), Azhin Kawa for the film Paths, and Seyed Payam Hosseini was honoured for Russian Vodka.
Organisers deemed the festival a great success, pledging an annual event.
4 Tagelang hatten wir das Glück 39 Filme zu zeigen und so viele Zuschauer auf unserem ersten kurdischen Filmfestival in Düsseldorf zu erreichen. Die Resonanz zeigte uns, dass so ein großes Interesse besteht und daher werden wir das Festival auch in den nächsten Jahren durchführen pic.twitter.com/E7JTL2wu6T
— Adil Demirci (@AdilDemirci_) April 29, 2024
