The TV series ‘No Man’s Land’, broadcast on the French-German culture and arts television channel ARTE, focuses on the war against ISIS in Rojava.
The TV series tells the story of the Syrian civil war through the eyes of Antoine, a young French man, in search of his estranged, presumed-to-be-dead sister. While unraveling the mystery, piece by piece, Antoine ends up joining forces with ISIS’ biggest nightmare – a unit of Kurdish female fighters – and travels with them into ISIS-occupied territory.
According to Ercan Jan Aktaş’s piece, the series begins with scenes of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ)’s stopover by the riverside. Aktaş uses academic Engin Sustam’s screenplay“No Man’s Land”. Sustam says: “No Man’s Land is one of the most successive screenplays filmed by the French”.
“The series begins in Paris and London. Lives of different people from different generations cross the lines between Peoples’ Protection Units and ISIS”.
The main character of the series is Antonie. It has the features of a documentary, crime novels and also contains the topics of geopolitics and family cabals.
For Sustam: “Perhaps the main point of the series is that the performers of the series witness the tragedy and the resistance within a geographical space: Kurdistan is a place of ‘No Man’s Land’ now. The Kurdish conversations of amateur performers alongside the famous are also admirable”.
According to the French journal France Culture, No man’s Land examines the romance of our times, similar to that of the “Spanish Civil War” a few decades ago.
Antoine Guillot says on No man’s Land: “Firstly, the thing I have most enjoyed is that the story combines geopolitical and international issues with the issues of the family to show the broader picture of the war”.
Ercan Jan Aktaş states that the series is a success: He urges labourers from Kurdistan and Turkey to watch No man’s Land.