Kurdish films shot in different countries were brought to Moscow

The Kurdish Film Festival is being held in Moscow for the third time. This year it is dedicated to Eastern (Iranian) Kurdistan. And it opened with the film “The Time of Drunken Horses” by Bahman Ghobadi, filmed in 2000 and awarded at the Cannes Film Festival with the Camera d’Or for its debut and the FIPRESCI prize. The festival will end with the world premiere of “5 kilograms of walnuts” and Behrouz Ghobadi, Bahman’s brother.

The titles of other films made by Kurdish directors are also unusual – “I Grew Pomegranates for You”, “The Life of a Snowflake” (filmed in the winter Turkish Trabzon), “Grape Fury”… Among the short films there is even “Russian Vodka”.

A representative delegation of Kurdish filmmakers arrived, living in different parts of historical Kurdistan, which is part of Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria. At the festival, words were heard more than once that the Kurds are a people without a single state. Competition films were created in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Germany, Sweden, Syria, and Spain.

Among the guests is the famous 23rd generation musician, composer and director of the documentary film “Tanbur” Farid Elhami. At the opening ceremony, he performed together with his son Said Imami, playing the tanbur and daf musical instruments. Farid’s family has a tanbur that is 800 years old. It is passed down from generation to generation.

For 15 years, Farid studied the history of the instrument and wrote three books about the tanbur before his film appeared. On the screen we see his meetings with musicians and tanbur makers. The songs that he himself, and once his ancestors performed, are 700-800 years old. The first model of tanbur appeared almost five thousand years ago. Representatives of the Moscow Conservatory, where they study Iranian classical music and are familiar with the capabilities of the unique instrument, came to the show. As it turned out, famous Kurdish performers, craftsmen who kept secret the peculiarities of tanbur making, came to them.

The feature film “Hole in the Wall” was presented by Bilal Korkut, a native of south-eastern Turkey, a graduate of Istanbul University, a theater and film director, as well as a literature teacher at a high school (like recently the Yakut director Dmitry Davydov). His film reminded us of our film “What Men Talk About.” The action takes place in one room, where there is a bar with a hole in the wall. Absolute minimalism: a refrigerator with drinks, a table where local men and one American Kurdologist studying the culture of this people have gathered. They discuss the current agenda, talk about poetry, women, read poetry and dream about changes in life.

Films are made not only by Kurdish men, but also by women. The documentary film “Traditional Kurdish Cuisine” by Asmar Rasul Aliye introduces the culinary arts of the region, as well as traditional art and historical monuments dating back thousands of years.

Before one of the shows, the Kurdish delegation honored representatives of their people who died in military conflicts with a minute of silence. The audience was presented with the short film “Traces of Ants” by Umit Güç about a tent camp where not only local peasants live, but also refugees who irritate them. Only the disappearance of children and their joint search can extinguish the hostility. “Bloody Water” by Tehran native Mojtaba Ghasemi is about women stuck in a swamp fleeing war and violence. No matter what horrific conditions the heroes are in, it is shot beautifully and sometimes resembles the paintings of masters.

The delegation was led by the acting representative of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government, Danar Mustafa, and the Minister of Culture and Youth of the Kurdistan-Iraq Regional Government, Mohammed Said Ali. They attended the screenings and talked about how, thanks to cinema, the world gets acquainted not only with the customs and traditions of their people, but with their pain and suffering.

There are three juries at the festival. What evaluates feature films consists of Russian filmmakers – director Dmitry Kiselev, actress Yulia Khlynina and producer Ekaterina Filippova. Short films and documentaries will be appreciated by Kurdish filmmakers from different countries. Thus, the jury of the documentary competition included: actor, director and producer Danny Darel (an excellent actor, starred in the film “Hole in the Wall”), director and producer Javi Ibrahim. And the Iranian director Shilan Saadi is presiding. The two juries of the short film competition – fiction and documentary – included: actor, director, writer and journalist from Dohuk (Iraqi Kurdistan) Ibrahim Selman, Iranian director, writer and film critic Amir Gholami, Iraqi actress Chrika Mohammad Ali, director and screenwriter Keyvan Fahimi, German director and producer Nesrine Abdeen, born in Damascus, director and screenwriter Reber Doski from Dohuk.

These days, the Gallery of Contemporary Art “Triptych” is hosting the exhibition “Kurds: Traditions and Modernity”, which presents contemporary Kurdish art, works by well-known and young artists of Kurdish origin.