AKFF 2024: shorts 1

Amsterdam Koerdisch Film Festival

A selection of Kurdish shorts

Zaam (Siavash Vaziri, 2023), 20 min.

Shoresh leads the family in absence of his departed dad and his elder mentally-ill brother. In spite of his younger sisters’ insistence to keep the sick brother in a mental asylum, he decides to take his brother home, which in turn makes the younger sisters plan to backfire, however, things do not go as planned.

Rec (Rezan Uğurlu, 2022) 6 min.

The film crew leaves the camera for a while, heading to a coastal village known for its abundance of sheep herds to record the movement of the herds. With their departure, the camera will have other visitors.

Aysha (Cengiz Akaygün, 2021) 13 min.

Aysha (10), who is wearing a full-body veil, sits in the backyard of a house in Rojava, Syria. While she plays with a slingshot, her sister (11) joins her. Both are put to test that morning by a woman (38) who is also wearing a full-body veil. They have to cite verses from the Quran. While Asyha’s older sister passes the test exemplary, Aysha is having trouble.

Kwestan (Fatemeh Bakhshipour and Ali Bahmani, 2023) 9 min.

The film tells the story of a girl who is raped by one of Khan’s mercenaries and becomes pregnant. The mercenary had to come to solicit marriage for the girl and in the absence of the girl’s father took the promise from her mother. The night before their introduction and engagement, the girl’s father arrives and opposes the marriage after learning about the groom’s affair (ignorance of the rape and the pregnancy). The mother’s efforts to convince the father are of no avail, and the daughter is finally forced to kill herself with her father’s gun.

Sura (Avinar Molaei, 2022), 12 min.

Sura is a musician (Defjen) from East Kurdistan. After seeing the advertisement for the music festival in Erbil, she decides to participate in the festival with her friends, however several social problems seem to be preventing this from happening.

Rewşen (Musab Tekin, 2021), 11 min.

B, who has been stuck in a loop loses his perception of time. He believes that, if he travels to Rewşen, he would get out of this cycle. While looking for the minibus in the garage he starts questioning “what Rewşen is”.