The Halabja massacre, also known as the Halabja chemical attack, was a massacre of Kurdish people that took place on 16 March 1988, during the closing days of the Iran–Iraq War in Halabja, Iraq. The attack was part of the Al-Anfal Campaign in Kurdistan, as well as part of the Iraqi Army's attempt to repel the Iranian Operation Zafar 7. It took place 48 hours after the capture of the town by the Iranian Army. A United Nations (UN) medical investigation concluded that mustard gas was used in the attack, along with unidentified nerve agents.
Halabja is a city in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and the capital of Halabja Governorate, located about 240 km (150 mi) northeast of Baghdad and 14 km (9 mi) from the Iranian border.
Turtles Can Fly is a 2004 Kurdish war drama film written, produced, and directed by Bahman Ghobadi. The film stars Soran Ebrahim, Avaz Latif, Saddam Hossein Faysal, Hiresh Feysal Rahman, Abdolrahman Karim, Ajil Zibari. The plot is about three refugee children, on the border of Iraq-Turkey, awaiting for the Americans to invade Iraq and the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Bahman Ghobadi is an Iranian Kurdish film director, producer and writer. He belongs to the "new wave" of Iranian cinema.
A Time for Drunken Horses is a 2000 Kurdish language film directed by Bahman Ghobadi and produced in Iran. It was a co-winner of the Caméra d'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000. Leonard Maltin notes that the film was "written by the director and shot in his native village, with a cast of extraordinary non-professionals."
Tawfeq Mahmoud Hamza or Piramerd was a Kurdish poet, writer, novelist and journalist. He was born in the Goija neighborhood of Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan Region. In 1926, he became the editor of the Kurdish newspaper Jîyan. He also established a private Kurdish school in Kurdistan, called Partukxane i Zanistî.
Uzak is a 2002 Turkish drama film written, produced, shot and directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
Ibrahim Ahmad was a Kurdish writer, novelist, judge and translator who founded the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in 1975. He is the father-in-law of Jalal Talabani and Abdul Latif Rashid through both of his daughters
Kurdish cinema focuses on the Kurdish people and culture. The fate of the Kurds as a people without a state shaped their cinema. Kurdish films often show social grievances, oppression, torture, human rights violations, and life as a stranger. Kurdish cinema has a high significance for the Kurds, as it offers the opportunity to draw attention to their own situation artistically. However, because of state repression, most films are produced in exile. The best example of this is in Turkey, where Kurds were not permitted to speak their native language until 1991, which made the development of their films more difficult.
Big Man, Little Love is a 2001 international co-production drama film, written and directed by Handan İpekçi, about an orphaned Kurdish child and a Turkish pensioner thrown together by circumstance. The film, which went on nationwide general release across Turkey on October 19, 2001, won awards at film festivals in Antalya, Cairo, Cologne and Istanbul, including the Golden Orange for Best Film, and was Turkey's submission to the 74th Academy Awards for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but was not accepted as a nominee.
Blackboards is a 2000 Iranian film directed by Samira Makhmalbaf. It focuses on a group of Kurdish refugees after the chemical bombing of Halabja by Saddam Hussein's Iraq during the Iran–Iraq War. The screenplay was co-written by Makhmalbaf with her father, Mohsen Makhmalbaf. The dialogue is entirely in Kurdish. Makhmalbaf describes it as "something between reality and fiction. Smuggling, being homeless, and people’s efforts to survive are all part of reality... the film, as a whole, is a metaphor."
Koutaiba Al-Janabi is a British-based Iraqi filmmaker, director and photographer. He filmed Wasteland: Between London and Baghdad and the 2010 award-winning film, Leaving Baghdad. He is a member of the Hungarian Society of Cinematographers.
Saman Salur is an Iranian film director and screenwriter. He graduated from Soore University with a Bachelor of Film and Television in Directing.
The Orphan of Anyang is a 2001 Chinese film from Sixth Generation writer-director Wang Chao. It is Wang's first feature film as director, and is based on a novel written by the director. The film constitutes the first part of a loose trilogy on life in modern China, followed by Day and Night (2004), and Luxury Car (2006). The film was produced by the independent Beijing-based Laurel Films, founded by screenwriter Fang Li. International distribution was by the French company Onoma.
Jano Rosebiani is an Iraqi-Kurdish American filmmaker. He is the winner of numerous international awards and has been listed in the top 35 world filmmakers in the book "Cineaste Uit De Schaduw" by Belgian celebrity photographer Kris De Witte.
Giuseppe Petitto was an Italian film director.
Min Dît: The Children of Diyarbakır is a 2009 Kurdish-language drama film, written, produced and directed by German-based Kurdish filmmaker Miraz Bezar, based on a story co-written with journalist and short-story writer Evrim Alataş, about street children in the eastern Turkish city of Diyarbakır. The film, which went on nationwide general release across Turkey on April 2, 2010, was the first Turkish film produced in Kurdish and won awards at film festivals in San Sebastian, where it premiered, Antalya and Istanbul.
Nila Madhab Panda is an Indian film producer and director. Panda has produced and directed over 70 films, documentaries and shorts based on social issues such as climate change, child labor, education, water issues, sanitation and many other developmental issues in India. Most of his films draw inspiration from his own life, having won several awards and critical acclaim for his films which have been received as entertaining yet socially relevant.
Małgorzata Szumowska is a Polish film director, screenwriter and producer, born in Kraków.
Bülent Öztürk is a Belgian-Kurdisch screenwriter and director based in Antwerp, Belgium. His films have been nominated for and celebrated with several (international) awards. His films stand out because of their minimalist and documentary style with spare use of dialogue and the recurrence of socially and culturally concerned themes. His short film Houses with Small Windows (2013) was awarded the title of best European short film at the Venice Film Festival, and was nominated for the 26th European Film Awards in Berlin. In his home country the film received an ‘Ensor’ for best short film at the Ostend Film Festival. Apart from writing and directing two documentaries and three short films, Öztürk presented his first feature film Blue Silence in 2017, with the support of The Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF).
