Letters from Sinjar (Nameyên ji Şengalê), a film framing the pain, hope, struggles and resistance of Yazidi women in Sinjar (Şengal) during ISIS’s occupation of the city and after the liberation, will be screened on 13 November, reported Jin News Agency.
The documentary including six episodes, in each of which a letter is read, has been directed by Dersîm Zêrevan.
Safînaz Evdiko, the producer and a member of the Rojava Film Commune, said that the film is to be screened in Qamishlo, a city in northern Syria, on 13 November, the anniversary of the liberation of Sinjar.
“Sinjar has been liberated by Kurdish freedom fighters and we have used it in some real scenes in our movie. These six letters are made up of lived stories and experiences,” Evdiko said.
“We want the story of genocide and liberation not to be forgotten. The people of Sinjar have survived and resisted despite 74 genocides and we want to show a short section of this resistance with our film,” she added.
Rozan Mistefa, the leading actor, explained that she played a female warrior in the film, which narrates the liberation movement that emerged after the occupation and the process of clearing the city completely of ISIS.
The ISIS attacks against Yazidis in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq started on 3 August 2014. ISIS overran the Yazidi land, forcing young women into sexual and domestic servitude for ISIS fighters, massacring thousands of people and displacing Yazidis in the area. ISIS was removed from the area on 13 November 2015. In 2016 an independent UN commission of inquiry recognised the massacres as genocide.
In the case of a Yazidi woman who spoke earlier, known only as S.H., the 27-year-old described how she disfigured her own face in order not to be ‘picked out’ and selected by ISIS members, after experiencing gruesome violence at the hands of ISIS.
The movie was also screened at the London Kurdish Film Festival.
