| A Requiem for Syrian Refugees | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical poster of A Requiem for Syrian Refugees | |
| Directed by | Richard Wolf |
Release date |
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Running time | 101 mins |
| Languages | Kurdish, English |
A Requiem for Syrian Refugees is a 2014 documentary film directed by Richard Wolf.
A Requiem for Syrian Refugees was shot in Northern Iraq by Richard Wolf, who travelled to the Kawergosk Refugee Camp, to investigate the state of affairs and living of the displaced people by the civil disorder in the Territory of the Islamic State. [1]
A Requiem for Syrian Refugees, reviewed by film historian, Roy Grundmann for Cinéaste , commented that "the synergized aestheticization of its subject moves the film closer to a Hollywoodized Gesamtkunstwerk of the ilk of Schindler's List." [2] Anita Gates of New York Times lauded Robert's directing and criticised the film "as a powerfully direct as it is unfortunately heavy-handed, with lingering black-and-white close-ups of barbed wire and children's wide eyes." She acknowledged that the film is good generally when she wrote, "but the film is eloquent, too, thanks to the voices of the refugees themselves." [3] Diana Clarke of The Village Voice expressed a tone of praise and sadness saying that Richard Wolf "gives his subjects, Syrians living in a refugee camp in northern Iraq, a platform to tell their truths. The result is urgent, deeply painful yet lovely in its aesthetics." [4]
Palestinian refugees are citizens of Mandatory Palestine, and their descendants, who fled or were expelled from their country, village or house over the course of the 1948 Palestine war and during the 1967 Six-Day War. Most Palestinian refugees live in or near 68 Palestinian refugee camps across Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In 2019 more than 5.6 million Palestinian refugees were registered with the United Nations.
The Badr Organization, previously known as the Badr Brigades or Badr Corps, is an Iraqi Shia Islamist and Khomeinist political party and paramilitary organization headed by Hadi al-Amiri. The Badr Brigade, formed in 1982 and led by Iranian officers, served as the military arm of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a Shia Islamic party based in Iran. The Badr Brigade was created by Iranian intelligence and Shia cleric Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim with the aim of fighting the Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein during the Iran–Iraq War. Since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, most of the Badr Brigade fighters have entered the new Iraqi army and police force. Since 2003, the Badr Brigade and SCIRI were considered to be one party, but have recently unofficially separated with the Badr Organization now being an official Iraqi political party. Badr Brigade forces, and their Iranian commanders, have come to prominence in 2014 fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Iraq. It is a part of the Popular Mobilization Forces.
Throughout the 20th century, Iraq witnessed multiple periods of instability and conflict that prompted the creation and flight of many refugees. Earlier examples include the exodus of Iraqi Jews and the flight of Iraqi Kurds. The Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980 and the ensuing Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988) triggered a deterioration of ties among the country's various ethnic and religious communities, and also exacerbated in violent events like the Ba'athist Arabization campaigns in northern Iraq (1968–2003), which led to the killing and displacement of thousands of minorities. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (1990) and the ensuing Gulf War (1990–1991), which ended with Iraq's defeat and the application of United Nations sanctions (1991–2003), also resulted in the creation of many Iraqi refugees. It was not until the beginning of the ongoing Iraqi conflict, however, that sustained waves of Iraqi refugees would be created, numbering in the millions: the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the ensuing Iraq War (2003–2011) killed and displaced hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, both internally and externally, and the later War in Iraq (2003–2017) forced even more people to flee from the country. Many Iraqi refugees established themselves in urban areas of other countries rather than in refugee camps.
Palestinians in Iraq are people of Palestinians, most of whom have been residing in Iraq after they were displaced in 1948. Before 2003, there were approximately 34,000 Palestinians thought to be living in Iraq, mainly concentrated in Baghdad. However, since the 2003 Iraq War, the figure lies between 10,000–13,000, although a precise figure has been hard to determine. The situation of Palestinians in Iraq deteriorated after the fall of Saddam Hussein and particularly following the bombing of the Al-Askari Mosque in 2006. Since then, with the rise in insecurity throughout Iraq, they have been the target of expulsion, persecution and violence by Shia militants, and the new Iraqi Government with militant groups targeting them for preferential treatment they received under the Ba'ath Party rule. Currently, several hundred Palestinians from Iraq are living in border camps, after being refused entry to neighbouring Jordan and Syria. Others have been resettled to third countries.
Iraqis in Syria are Syrian citizens of Iraqi origin and Iraqi residents in Syria.
The Syrian civil war is an ongoing multi-sided conflict in Syria involving various state-sponsored and non-state actors. In March 2011, popular discontent with the rule of Bashar al-Assad triggered large-scale protests and pro-democracy rallies across Syria, as part of the wider Arab Spring protests in the region. After months of crackdown by the government's security apparatus, various armed rebel groups such as the Free Syrian Army began forming across the country, marking the beginning of the Syrian insurgency. By mid-2012, the crisis had escalated into a full-blown civil war.
Lena Dunham is an American writer, director, actress, and producer. She is the creator, writer, and star of the HBO television series Girls (2012–2017), for which she received several Emmy Award nominations and two Golden Globe Awards. Dunham also directed several episodes of Girls and became the first woman to win the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Comedy Series. She started her career writing, directing, and starring in her semi-autobiographical independent film Tiny Furniture (2010), for which she won an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay. She has since written and directed the 2022 films Sharp Stick and Catherine Called Birdy.
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Dylan Rhodes O'Brien is an American actor. His first major role was as Stiles Stilinski in the MTV supernatural series Teen Wolf (2011–2017). He achieved further prominence for his lead role in the science fiction Maze Runner trilogy (2014–2018), which led to more film appearances.
Refugees of the Syrian civil war are citizens and permanent residents of Syria who have fled the country in the course of the Syrian civil war. The pre-war population of the Syrian Arab Republic was estimated at 22 million (2017), including permanent residents. Of that number, the United Nations (UN) identified 13.5 million (2016) as displaced persons in need of humanitarian assistance. Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011 more than six million (2016) were internally displaced, and around five million (2016) crossed into other countries, seeking asylum or placement in Syrian refugee camps. It is believed to be one of the world's largest refugee crises.
The problem of Kurdish refugees and displaced people arose in the 20th century in the Middle East, and continues today. The Kurds, are an ethnic group in Western Asia, mostly inhabiting a region known as Kurdistan, which includes adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.
Thomas Steven Middleditch is a Canadian actor. He is known for his role as Richard Hendricks in the HBO series Silicon Valley (2014–2019), earning a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. He has voiced Penn Zero in the Disney XD animated series Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero (2014–2017), Harold Hutchins in Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (2017), Sam Coleman in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), and Terry in the Hulu adult animated sci-fi series Solar Opposites. Middleditch also appears in ads for Verizon Wireless.
Turkey's involvement in the Syrian civil war began diplomatically and later escalated militarily. Initially, Turkey condemned the Syrian government at the outbreak of civil unrest in Syria during the spring of 2011; the Turkish government's involvement gradually evolved into military assistance for the Free Syrian Army in July 2011, border clashes in 2012, and direct military interventions in 2016–17, in 2018, in 2019, 2020, and in 2022. The military operations have resulted in the Turkish occupation of northern Syria since August 2016.
Al-Hawl, also spelled al-Hole, al-Hol, al-Hool and al-Houl, is a town in eastern al-Hasakah Governorate, northeastern Syria, under control of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. It is the administrative center of the Al-Hawl Subdistrict consisting of 22 municipalities. At the 2004 census, the town had a population of 3,409. Al-Hawl is the site of the Al-Hawl refugee camp.
The Yazidi genocide was perpetrated by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2017. It was characterized by massacres, genocidal rape, and forced conversions to Islam. The Yazidis are a Kurdish-speaking people who are indigenous to Kurdistan who practice Yazidism, a monotheistic Iranian ethnoreligion derived from the Indo-Iranian tradition.
Rukban is an arid remote area in northeast Jordan adjacent to the Jordan–Syria border, and close to the tripoint with Iraq.
Dawson City: Frozen Time is a 2016 American documentary film written, edited, and directed by Bill Morrison, and produced by Morrison and Madeleine Molyneaux. First screened in the Orizzonti competition section at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival, the film details the history of the remote Yukon town of Dawson City, from the Klondike Gold Rush to the 1978 Dawson Film Find: a discovery of 533 nitrate reels containing numerous lost films. The recovered silent films, buried beneath a hockey rink in 1929, included shorts, features, and newsreel footage of various events, such as the 1919 World Series.
Syrians in Turkey, includes Turkish citizens of Syrian origin, Syrian refugees, and other Syrian citizens resident in Turkey. As of October 2024, there are more than 3 million registered refugees of the Syrian Civil War in Turkey, which hosts the biggest refugee population in the whole world. In addition, about 75,000 Syrian nationals reside in Turkey with a residence permit. Apart from Syrian refugees under temporary protection and Syrian citizens with a residence permit; 238,768 Syrian nationals acquired Turkish citizenship as of August 2024.
The al-Hawl refugee camp is a refugee camp on the southern outskirts of the town of al-Hawl in northern Syria, close to the Syria-Iraq border, which holds individuals displaced from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The camp is nominally controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) but according to the U.S. Government, much of the camp is run by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant who use the camp for indoctrination and recruitment purposes.
Richard Wolf is a Brazilian-American documentary film director. He directed the documentary films Light Within the Cracks and A Requiem for Syrian Refugees.
