Kurdish filmmaker and activist Lisa Çalan has warned that decades of conflict have profoundly scarred Kurdish artistic expression, urging artists to take responsibility in shaping peace after Abdullah Öcalan’s latest call for a democratic resolution to the Kurdish question during an interview with Heval Önkol of Mezopotamya Agency on Tuesday.
Çalan said the war’s shadow has left deep fractures in cultural life, and artists must now help rebuild a future based on reconciliation following the 27 February declaration by jailed Kurdish leader Öcalan – which called for ‘Peace and Democratic Society’.
“This process gives us a chance to reconstruct democratic society,” said Çalan, a founding member of the Freedom for Art Initiative. “But artists must take the lead — we haven’t even learned to talk about peace, let alone create it through art.”
Öcalan’s call, embraced by a wide spectrum of civil society groups and supported by voices around the world, aims to reinitiate dialogue around a lasting resolution to the Kurdish conflict. For Çalan, the cultural sector must not stay silent.
Reflecting on her experiences as a filmmaker in Diyarbakır (Amed), Çalan said Kurdish cinema has historically centred on war, displacement, language bans, and poverty. “We have no visual language for peace. That alone shows the scale of destruction,” she added.
For Çalan and her peers, the task ahead is immense. The past decade has seen mass displacement of artists, a sharp decline in cultural production, and rising repression of peace discourse. “Even the word ‘peace’ has been criminalised. People fear saying it out loud,” she said.
Still, she believes that healing is possible — if artists organise and face historical truths. “We must confront what we’ve endured. From there, we can gather again, and begin to articulate a new story.”
Çalan described Kurdish cinema as “resistance cinema”, surviving against all odds. “It has always resisted erasure,” she said. “Now it must help us imagine peace.”
