AKFF 2024: shorts 2

Amsterdam Koerdisch Film Festival

A selection of Kurdish shorts

A Dance for freedom (Salem Salavati, 2023), 16 min.

Nanny Asiah, an elderly woman who makes a living by selling sugar, makes a promise to herself after her son’s execution in the Kurdistan prison that if she can stop someone from retribution (execution), she will dance and rejoice until the morning call to prayer.

The last tree (Zülfü Gül, 2023), 2 min.

What happens when the last tree on earth is cut down?

The little stranger (Shakila Moezi, 2023), 9 min.

A little girl goes to her grandmother’s house with a small black fish and there she meets a strange boy who also has a fish in the pond. They disagree over dividing the pond for the fish.

The apple (Mehmet Acaruk,2023), 15 min.

Encountering Magritte’s “Apple Painting” at an art gallery in Paris in her 50s, Zerya reveals the pain of the trauma she has been feeding since her youth.

My body is a warzone (Hêja Netirk, 2022) 3 min.

When ISIS attacked Rojava, they kidnapped woman and enslaved them. They turned them into sex slaves who had to wear Hijab in public places all the time. When YPG/YPJ namely Kurdish forces rescued these woman the first thing they did was getting rid of Hijab. This film refers to this moment. The change between two different perspectives of Paradise. Wearing a Hijab and praying to go to paradise and removing the Hijab and singing a female narrated traditional Kurdish Dengbej song to create Paradise or at least eliminate the Hell!

Sarina (Julia Zimmermann, 2023) 25 min.

Two Kurdish women from Rojehlat, Iran are fighting for their rights after the 2022 protest in Iran due to the death of Jina Mahsa Amini.