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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Kurdish Film Festival Berlin kicked off on Thursday with a tragicomedy film about the status of Kurds under the Syrian regime in the eighties. The event will last for nearly a week.
Founded in 2002, the Kurdish Film Festival Berlin’s twelfth edition was held in the German capital city of Berlin on Thursday. The event began by featuring Neighbours by Syrian-Kurdish director, Mano Khalil. The film tells the story of a child, Sero, who lived on the Syrian-Turkish border in the eighties. His family lived peacefully with their Jewish neighbours but a pro-regime Arab teacher arrived in their village and began spreading hatred against Jews and banned Kurdish language at school.
Khalil told Rudaw’s Zinar Shino at the event that his childhood experience under the Syrian regime inspired him to produce such a film - in which the teacher asks Jews to leave the village.
“My own family suffered from the policy of separating Kurds. I remember, when I was six, I went to the border [with Turkey] for the first time. My mother pointed to a person through barbed wire and said ‘That is your uncle.’ When I kissed my uncle through the barbed wire, this moment stayed as a strong memory,” he recounted.
Ahmed Zirek, who played a main role in the film, is from Turkey. He said the Turkish state practised a similar policy against Kurds, especially through assimilation.
The festival, organised by mîtosfilm production company, will continue until October 19. It claims to be “the largest event on Kurdish film [event] in Europe.”
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