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The Middle-Eastern Cinema Academy is an association founded in 2012 in Diyarbakır in order to respond to the needs of Kurdish movie makers.
Metin Ewr, formerly in charge along with Zinar Karabaş and Rojhilat Aksoy, currently directing the academy, agreed to answer our questions.
Could you introduce yourselves?
Metin Ewr: I started working in the cinema through TV series, in 2009 when I arrived in Amed. I’m a scriptwriter. I wrote texts for the theater prior to that, in the Mesopotamian Cultural Center’s theater in Adana. At the same time, I led workshops in script writing, directing and acting. When I came here, the series Ax û Jiyan was about to be shot. Kurdistan has been subjected to a cultural genocide. In films, Kurds were in the background and shown in a negative way. We then decided “if a film or a series must be shot, we are the ones who know our own reality best, so let’s do it ourselves”. It was a totally Kurdish shoot for the first time, from the team directing to the actors. The characters, the story, everything was Kurdish. We produced 52 episodes. Then we managed to keep the team together and founded the Middle-Eastern Cinema Association. From there, we have conducted our cinematographic activities. Our objective was to develop alternative cinema and Kurdish cinema simultaneously. Because the situation is such in Turkey that those who want to make films get no State support or are even kept from doing so. We wished to be an open door as a remedy. We support projects that offer a cinema that does not humiliate women, children, nature but who respects them instead.
Zinar Karabaş : I’ve been working at the Middle-Eastern Cinema Academy since 2015. I became part of a system already set up. I arrived at a time when the most important steps were being taken, right in the middle of a big production project. At first, I was surprised by the difficulties caused by working in a climate bringing visibility to Kurdish cinema. Arriving in a heavily significant situation confused me at first. I took part in it and developed the awareness of what we could bring to Kurdish cinema later, by being a part of it. Entering in such a serious project, I realized it was a difficult approach. You’ve grown up with Turkish cinema, world cinema. With all that, you’ve developed a certain internal awareness and then, you work in Kurdish cinema. In this way, you end up being in conflict with yourself: it’s a shock but which allows for the understanding of certain things… All that improves over time. The Academy’s aim is perhaps to create this shock in people, to push them into a journey that will make them progress in their own awareness. In Bakur, we are one of the few alternative cinema associations. As people come and go, we attempt to safeguard the memory of the work done. Understanding what we do and maintaining this memory are also part of the Academy’s objectives. In attempting to keep the Academy alive, we have the possibility of forming the people who come to it through what we do. Moreoever, you find yourself in a position where you are constantly learning yourself.
Rojhilat Aksoy : I grew up in Istanbul. It all began by meeting friends from over here after university, at a time of filming the series Ax û Jiyan. Realizing this series in Kurdish impressed me. The friends asked me if I wanted to stay and work here. But at the time, I still had in mind plans for studies, work, a career… I was ill prepared to the idea of doing something for our cause even though my family has always been part of the struggle for the safeguarding of identity in Istanbul. But then I told myself, “why not?”. Instead of going back to Istanbul and working somewhere…The notion of this Kurdish cinema moved me. With this series, I saw how useful telling one’s own stories could be.
We have been working for 8 years. Festivals, short and full-length films, documentaries…The association does not only manage its own projects. It is open to all the peoples living in Turkey. Festivals offer the opportunity for meetings with other film makers. Other initiatives existed prior to our association, for example, Aram Tigran, within the Metropolitan City Hall of Diyarbakır, Cigerxwin in Karapınar offering teaching at higher grades. The association was born later. In Istanbul there was the Mesopotamia Collective, Yapım 13. In Kurdistan, the Cinema Academy became active as an association in 2012 and has transformed itself into a space where Kurdish film makers meet and struggle to create their own cinema.
Filming a new short feature by the team from the association (Loez)
What are you working on currently?
Rojhilat: Given the current situation, our work is a bit restricted. The association finished the series Ax û Jiyan, followed by a dramatic series of 13 episodes, Ref. Then Marina, a sit-com. This was also a series in which the directors, technicians, and actors were Kurds. Following this series, a film, 14 Temmuz (July 14) was produced under Haşim Aydemir’s direction. This was our first feature-length film, followed by a second one Böğürtlen Zamanı (Mulberry Season). Distribution and entry in festivals will certainly occur this year for this latter film. Then we made short films and documentaries. They were rather smaller projects because with the naming of administrators (kayyım) in the city halls 1, some things have changed.
For instance?
Rojhilat: We organized festivals with city halls, such as the Amed International Film Festival, the Amed Documentary Film Festival, the Axdamara Film Festival in Van, the Yılmaz Güney Festival in Batman… These festivals provided spaces in which film makers could meet, Kurdish cinema could obtain visibility, opposition cinema could be screened. With the arrival of the administrators, our financial means were reduced. By obtaining aids and funding from abroad, we organize workshops, we also managed to put together the 7th edition of the Amed Film Festival by collecting funds here and there. Recently, we had prepared the Yılmaz Güney Film Festival which was supposed to take place in Batman but, in the end, an administrator was named at city hall there also. Our preparations were stopped. Because in selecting content, our choices go mostly to alternative cinema, rather oppositional, using Kurdish, the tongue of “the others” and it becomes difficult to set up this type of initiative when an administrator is named to city hall.
We currently have support coming from Catalonia. We will be conducting workshops during a year in cinema, music, theater, painting, with children, youth and women. We recently made a short film directed by Ilhan Bakir and another by Metin Ewr, we still need to finalize post-production.
How do you organize?
Metin: We are a group of volunteers. Here, everything is done collectively. From the from the Board of administration to the everyday tasks, we pursue a collective approach. We see this place both as a training venue and one where we attempt to develop our cinema. When we start on a project, we do so together in distributing the work. Some of us have specializations, for instance, I usually handle scriptwriting, other friends handle the administration, and others the camera work. But when required, the director can become a lighting or a sound technician, the scriptwriters can clean the premises. The roles are shared and when a void appears, we fill it. In fact, we don’t have a mindset where each person would handle one specific thing. Everything is done together.
Can you share a few shooting experiences?
Zinar: The hardes part is creating a collective environment on the set, creating the language setting us apart from the classical cinema sector… It’s something like guerilla cinema, each of us grabs one end, we help one another. The last short film was hard. It’s our second shoot during the pandemic which imposes rules, and mentalities and situations in flux. Everything can easily become confused. Perhaps commercial cinema very quickly adapted to this, or since they have a work-centered approach, the fact one person becomes ills is of no particular concern because he or she can be replaced and the show goes on. Here, things are different, more delicate. If someone falls sick because of us, because of something we wish to create, if something happens to someone… fatigue takes over at times, especially intellectually. The fact of filming in Sur 2 keeps you under constant pressure. This is related to the theme of what we are filming…Yes, we have authorizations but over there, you are under surveillance and can be stopped at any moment. Over there, even with official authorizations, you are not necessarily protected. There is also the pressure of artistic creation.
(Loez)
Is filming in Kurdish something important for you?
They laugh and all say “yes” at the same time.
Metin: Of course. Because you have experienced assimilation, the eradication of your culture, you have been denied. In Bakur, until 1995 there were no Kurdish editions at all. It was forbidden. You could not speak Kurdish at school. In villages deep in Kurdistan, teachers were named who did not speak a single word of Kurdish. The children were all Kurds and didn’t speak Turkish. But the teacher in the school, is the representative of the State, of assimilation, she puts together a punishment system for the pupils who speak in Kurdish. You go to the bank, you can’t speak it, in administrative services, you can’t, your interlocutor wouldn’t even answer you. Even in the family, you feel the oppression. Your identity, your culture, your language are denied. You experience all this and to this day you go on paying the price for it…
In 1995, Turgut Özal, then President of the Republic said during an interview, “so what, my grandmother also speaks Kurdish”. Following these words which were not even an official declaration, a Kurdish newspaper saw the light of day. In order to express yourself, you must use your own tongue. Even today, I have problems when I speak in Turkish. It’s different with Kurdish. What I experience, I experience in my own language, so I can best express it that way.
So, beginning in 1995, works in Kurdish started being published. And Kurdish artistic creation progressed alongside this. With the opening of the Mesopotamia Cultural Center (MKM), artistic and cultural activities began in the mother tongue. When you put the question to us today…it’s a bit like taking the medicine appropriate to what ails you: you create according to what you feel. Your country is under occupation, you are subjected to a cultural genocide, your freedom is confiscated, you are necessarily going to express all that through your art. You will express what concerns you. Even if you keep me from doing so, even if you deny me, I will do it anyway…Our most recent short film, on Kurdish media, spoke about that also. Because there exists a forbidden press, a forbidden tongue, a forbidden people. It is the story of a press organ which throws the light on the reality experienced by our people who pay a heavy price for this, dozens of journalists, correspondents, distributors were assassinated. We must be aware of these things, we must keep them in our memory. These things are not forgotten, you feel them, you come across them all the time. Today, now that technology is so advanced, that the whole world knows about everything, schools teaching in Kurdish, institutions offering course in Kurdish are shut down, again, Kurdish media are being shut down…This assimilation is ongoing today before the eyes of the world. Therefore, we shall carry on.
Which was the first Kurdish film in your opinion?
Metin: The cinema section opened in the MKM in Istanbul in the nineties. Our cinema began around that time…We’re slowly moving forward.
Rojhilat: Before us, in Turkish cinema, there were productions oriented toward the Kurds such as Mem û Zin, Siyabend û Haxe… When Yılmaz Güney shot Yol, Sürü, they were also stories about Kurds but the film’s original language was not Kurdish. Because when the film is in Kurdish, it can encounter problems with Turkish authorities. In Istanbul, Yapım 13 served as an advance, again in the nineties, with the films Bahus, Afla and others.
Yılmaz Güney is a Kurdish film maker, but his films are in Turkish…
Rojhilhat: Yes but the stories are Kurdish.
Metin: The language is Turkish. But if we look at the theme, at the characters…
Rojhilhat: The geography…
Metin: In those days, Kurdish was forbidden. And Yılmaz Güney was one of the first to film in Bakur… When you look at the content, they are Kurdish films. Only the language is missing. He was a popular film maker, notorious, so the Turks say he belongs to Turkish cinema. But in his interviews, his statements, he expressed who he is and what he wanted to do. When he made some of his films, he was in prison. He directed his films from prison. The scenes were shot and brought to him and he could provide his directives in this way.
Rojhilat: Yılmaz Güney says he is Kurdish but he adds that he makes… Turkish films. Perhaps this is because of the absence of a State, one cannot speak of a Kurdish cinema, a “national” cinema. Perhaps Yılmaz Güney could have made his films in Kurdish. But they would have been forbidden, they would not have been distributed everywhere in the world, he probably wouldn’t be as famous in Turkey. He also worked as an actor in Yeşilçam 3. He said in the reportages that it was a money-making venture, to make himself known, find his place in the film world, become a producer who could make his own films on Kurdistan. For instance, I think it was in Yol… you could see a sign reading “Kurdistan” for a moment and that film was forbidden for a long time. It’s a risk for film makers…Under assimilation policies, it is very hard to work in your maternal tongue. The State uses Kurds in its policies, but there is no official recognition. That’s precisely what Kurds are fighting for. When Halil Dağ was making Berîtan 4 he managed to create his own cinema and his own cinematographic expression with “resistance cinema”, far from these fears, in a free climate, on free lands. How was this film distributed in Turkey? I was small but I remember, the film arriving with leaders of the Kurdish party of those days and it was shown secretely. It was impossible to feature a Kurdish film in a cinema.
We made July 14 in 2017 5. Since it is a film about the prisons, there is Kurdish spoken as well as Turkish. It was impossible to show the film in a cinema or to distribute it via the Culture ministry. In Southern Kurdistan [Irak], the film made it to a cinema but the authorities forbade the screening. Even though this is an autonomous Kurdish federation, the screening was stopped due to Turkey’s influence over there.
Making films in the maternal language in Turkey is still very difficult. For instance, recently we made a short film. We carried out the administrative procedures in Turkish. Had we done them in Kurdish, we would not have obtained the required authorizations. In the spirit of “resistance cinema”, we look out for means. We set up the files for films in Turkish or we submit the project for another film. Because even if the film is in Turkish, if the theme is political, security forces consider it must be forbidden. We look for alternative ways and means to bring our projects to fruition. Yet, when we submit one project and make another, this means additional pressure on us. Because even if you obtained authorizations, you are filming secretely…
During the “resolution period” 6, several films were made such as Klama Dayika Min (My mother’s song), Dengê Bavê Min (My father’s voice) but those are also half in Turkish, half in Kurdish. Kurdish film makers and producers attempt to make their films without encountering problems with the Ministry of Culture, and not “disturbing” the State politically. Which means they don’t say “it’s forbidden, so we stop”. They fight, they encounter problems…For example only recently, Kazım Öz made his film Zer for which he even obtained the support of the Turkish Ministry of Culture. The story was about a character in search of his identity and the film showed his experience in Dersim. In one scene, the character met a group of fighters there. The Ministry of Culture prohibited this film. So Kazam Öz who is a Kurdish film maker in an oppositional stance and who carries out his struggle this way, replaced this sequence with a blackout indicating that the scene had been censored. It was a way of protesting against censorship.
Kazım Öz’ films are available with French sub-titles at the Bretagne & Diversité cinémathèque
(Loez)
Is there an audience for Kurdish cinema?
Rojhilat: Of course. Recent Kurdish films were screened before the arrival of the administrators in the city halls. The festivals we organized over 8 years were followed drew a lot of interest and attracted substantial audiences of mostly young people.
Metin : This shows the importance of our association… For example, you make a film but you cannot show it to an audience. This is true not only for Kurdish films, it holds true for all alternative and oppositional cinema. There are cinemas available but the distributors don’t want to screen the films, for fear of a police raid, or other problems. With the festival we organized via our association, we could ride over the barriers. Because the audience is there with a great potential. An audience thirsting for Kurdish cinema because they see something of themselves in it. The screenings are always full, whether it takes place in a hall or in other spaces such as parks or gardens. At a certain period we even had a cinema where we could screen alternative films.
Do you have thoughts about how to make cinema available to a wide audience in Kurdistan?
Rojhilat : We pay particular attention to bringing films to audiences who cannot go to cinemas. We consider cinema must move outside the four walls, so we attempt to widen the spaces. For instance, since halls screening Kurdish films are few, when we organize festivals we usually have a public coming from large towns. But a mother, a youth in a village, they can’t take advantage of it. So, at each festival, we also provided open air screenings in villages. Lack of financial means keeps a part of the population away from cinemas. It cannot come so you must go toward it. We made this mandatory with the festivals. But for the past two years, we haven’t been able to follow through because of the policies of the State administrators in the city halls, no longer financing us. This is suffocating us…
How does the State impede your action?
Rojhilat: The film Bakur was condemned 7. Cinemas were fined for screening Nû jîn (New Life)8. Kurdish films are available but in order to screen them, you must be willing to take risks, including that of being imprisoned. Opposition cinema in Turkey, films that talk about Armenians, Syriacs, Yazidis are subjected to exactly the same problems. Perhaps our association displayed a bit more courage than others. This also explains its notoriety. Sometimes, film makers contacted us asking “could you at least screen this film?”… For instance Banga Roj (Call of the day) a documentary 9 about the return of guerrilla fighters during the resolution period. There were no screenings outside our festivals. Bakur was scheduled during conventional festivals in Istanbul, in Ankara, its showing created huge tensions in the teams organizing the festival. It was pulled from the programs…
See Bakur with English sub-titles in the Bretagne & Diversité cinémathèque
Same thing for Selim Yıldız’ documentary Bîra Mitêin (I remember) which talks about the Roboski massacre, it was pulled off festival programs. During a festival we organized in Van, the police showed up and forbade the screening of the films, using the absence of exploitation visas as an excuse… They drew up statements against us, we were called up before the tribunal… We eventually received a document forbidding half of the films on the program. We screened them anyway. Under tremendous pressure, of course.
How can you escape from such repression?
Rojhilat: In Kurdistan, if you are involved in an oppositional activity, you must create your own space for expression. With the arrival of administrators in the city halls, a number of cultural associations were closed down, but also, press outlets, publishing houses, literature spaces… But as Kurds have learned to fight constantly against closings, restrictions, prohibitions, each shutting down is followed by the creation of a new space replacing the previous one. Resistance is the objective. Perhaps friends involved in associations and structures were arrested at the time, but others took up the relay in new structures. For a time, such as that of the resolution 10, you breathe a bit and you can work a bit more freely, then, things change in the State’s policies, a new period arrives of chaos, arrests, prohibitions… We are under surveillance now. If our association were to be shut down, we would create another structure. We have to do this, because we exist and we produce. We are not the type to give up. And even if we did give up, those following us would keep on with the work. This is what we learned from the war, with the prohibitions. They allowed us to develop a way of thinking, a logic that will always allow us to find alternatives…
(Loez)
What can cinema provide to the Kurdish struggle?
Metin: Cinema allows the spreading of a people’s thinking and language. It is the visual transmission of what you wish to express. If you want to make a people’s cinema, you must put that people’s reality forward.
Zinar: Other film makers criticize us a lot. “Go beyond pure propaganda films, beyond political films, you don’t widen your scope enough, you always express yourselves within that framework,” they say. Yes, cinema is a very wide space of expression, but that is our focus. Political films or films about topics inspired by different experiences, of life, of nature, of women… films that project these realities back to the viewer.
Metin: Is not the artist the mirror of society? The artist must put forward what that society needs. Then, you are in a full, complete struggle. You cannot deal with topics independently from this.
Kurds are massacred and denied constantly. You have no identity. Until the 70s in the metropolis, they called us “Kurds with tails”. My father told me how he had gone to work in central Anatolia. He said “I see someone turning around me. I ask him what he’s doing. He asks me ‘where is your tail?” This is what they were told about us.” We are now in the 20s of this century and we are still oppressed, attempts are still made to confiscate our freedom. Your identity, your language are still being denied. Your institutions are shut down. If you experience all this, you are going to fight against it in your cinema, your theater, your music, your painting, your sculpture… If the artist is aware, if he or she is a mirror for the people, this is what he or she must express. Because it is the reality and you must hold it up for all eyes to see. This is a need. Like hunger. This is what people ask of you…
Rojhilat: How to contribute to the struggle, we aks ourselves the same questions. For instance, here, in Sur, in Cizre, etc, there were uprisings in favor of autonomy. You want to show this struggle through your camera. There are documentaries, short and full-length feature films. The artist, the Kurdish film maker, influenced by the struggle, does these things naturally.
Take the Rojava revolution, for instance. Several films were made on this topic. Les filles du soleil (The girls of the Sun), Les sœurs d’armes (The Sisters in Arms), French films. No doubt impressed by the revolution, those film makers’ attention was suddenly drawn toward Rojava. As this revolution is talked about all over the world, Kurdish film makers cannot be indifferent to it. But what are their possibilities? Does a film maker in Rojava have the technical means with which to work? Can he shoot his own stories himself? Or is he dependent on the outside world? A foreign production comes on location to shoot a film using the revolution as its topic and we, the Kurds, look at this film, and feel embarrassed: the fact that the style smacks of Hollywood, the fact they talk about us or about a hero, integrating him in that style…It makes you question the level of knowledge or ignorance of the Kurdish liberation movement, and the film disturbs us. Style: Hollywood, topic: the Kurds, French realization, French production…And yet, we look at it as being a part of Kurdish cinema. As we have no national criterion, no State, we take into account all films treating of the Kurds, made anywhere in the world. But to what extent are Kurds the masters of their own cinema? How do the Kurds talk about themselves? Are Kurds content with being narrated by others? No, we are not. Perhaps those films have a certain importance in bringing world attention on the revolution in Rojava, to raise awareness, provide some publicity, but at the level content and in the way of talking about revolutionaries, of the movement, we find them problematic. As a Kurdish film maker, these topics also hold my attention, when a foreign film maker comes and makes a film on this topic, it produces an expression we find disturbing. For this reason, Kurdish film makers must carry out their own struggle, develop their own cinema. A film maker, a revolutionary in Rojava will best express his or her revolution.
There is a cinema collective in Rojava which organized a festival and shoots films. They made Ji Bo Azadiyê about the resistance in Sur 11. In fact, it is an ongoing monitoring of the struggles. The four parts of Kurdistan, even though they are subjected to oppressions, observe one another. A story here, in this part, may be picked up as a topic in another part. Currently a film is being shot on Kobanê. The film makers told themselves “other film makers have always talked about us. We must talk about ourselves.” There may be problems in terms of technical means but as far as content goes, the Kurdish film maker can offer something that is more authentic and seen through the eyes of this artist, this war, this revolution will certainly be something else. We want Kurds to orient their own art, their own cinema.
In Yılmaz Güney’s films, the language was not Kurdish. From time to time, there were little things. Names for example. Slowly, they have introduced the Kurdish language in cinema even if it was hard to do so. For a long time we were embarrassed by the fact that Turkish film makers used for the Kurds the image of “people from the East, who speak a massacred Turkish”. That is not even a reflection of the Kurdish language… Perhaps it is too much to ask of a Turk to interpret us in our tongue, but… For them, we were nothing but people from the East, and they showed us in their films, in their series with our “massacred Turkish”. They described our stories as problematic. They were narrated against a feudal, tribal background. This disturbed us and it was the reason why we began organizing. When we wish to tell a Kurdish love story, we want to do it with the Kurdish feelings and language. While the Rojava revolution is ongoing, we want to see it and hear it through the eyes and the tongue of a Kurdish film maker. Kurds must be able to create with their feelings, their fighting spirit. With experience as well as content, narration and technique will develop and improve. And Kurdish cinema will gain even more visibility.
Watch all the Kurdish films with French sub-titles, offered by Bretagne & Diversité.
Cinema and the women’s point of view…
Zinar: In Kurdish cinema, the treatment of women is often limited to death, to murder…In many productions, the topic is introduced in a brutal way with a moral dimension: the honor killings, the fact that the woman is forced to stay at home or to be assassinated, that she has a limited awareness…We make a lot of efforts to support Kurdish cinema, but content-wise, the same mistakes keep on being repeated. Why is it always the woman who is killed? These topics almost become a genre in themselves: “Searching for an actress for the role of assassinated woman”. We need to get out of this. In fact, the camera language is masculine and remains limited. The esthetics and the form of the films are modeled on this language and, somewhere, this limits the presence of women in the field. We need to open up a larger space, to widen the imagination…
For instance, we organized a travelling initiative, “The Days of Women’s Films”. We went from one village to the next. We projected the film Sibel. This takes place in the Black Sea region. Despite being mute, Sibel is a strong woman. She communcates by whistling, especially with her father and her sister. She is a woman respectful of a nature which understands her language, she struggles against the macho mentality, she knows what she wants, who can love, embrace or not embrace. This dimension is often forgotten in films that talk about women…During our travelling screenings, we encountered certain problems. In one bath scene, you see Sibel’s back. The audience reacted pretty violently to this scene, not tolerating this image from a morality point of view. You could analyze the reactions, especially thanks to the children. They reacted quickly and spontaneously, and according to the topics, you could pretty much guess the tabus in their family, at home. An arm, a naked back, the women turned their faces away, embarrassed…We then reached the conclusion that if, the population was not offered films that consider the person as a human being, if we don’t make them available, people withdraw within themselves. What is normal becomes abnormal. Yet, scenes of fights or taunts were considered normal by the audience because they are part of the masculine mentality and of the dominant patriarchal culture. When you leave the screening hall and move with your screen and your projector, there are powerful interactions. You meet a much more spontaneous public – not at all the same as that in conventional halls.
Are you considering a production without men?
Zinar: Only with women? Yes. We’ve been thinking about it for a long time and are attempting to build the infrastructure. We have to think about it, we, the women, be it on set or elsewhere we are a bit in the background when it comes to the technical aspects. We are very involved in the practical, artistic and organizational areas, in the production, the control room, makeup, we are often concentrated within these limits. As in many other sectors, the technical aspects remain the men’s department. Some technical jobs are still presented as requiring physical strength. Making a film only with women would be interesting. I’m curious to see such a set, I think if we can pull this off, we will be more at ease in expressing ourselves.
Rojhilat: During this period, we are attempting to carry off more modest activities. Things might change. Perhaps city halls will be regained during elections in forthcoming years…And we can then make and offer more films, organize initiatives. A conquest, once again…Perhaps young people can continue to provide an audience via internet. But what do they watch? Kurdish cinema? Series? Which ones? Policies impose Turkish productions on young people, this is what they watch mainly. Our objective is to bring them to watching some cinema in their maternal language, to show them their language exists in the world of art.
Meryem Yavuz, Rojhilat Aksoy, Zinar Karabaş, Lisa Çalan/ (Loez)
Metin: In Kurdistan, on these lands where we live, nothing is unrelated to politics, and nothing can be achieved without struggle.
Our leader (Apo) says this also, “In Kurdistan, without politics, even the leaf cannot budge on a tree.” You only win by struggling. And all those struggles, those efforst are in order to win. If today, we can speak of a Kurdish cinema, it is thanks to the efforst and struggles of Yılmaz Güney, Halil Dağ…
Interview conducted by Loez
English adaptation from the French translation by Naz Oke
In order to contact the Middle-Eastern Cinema Academy: sineakademi@gmail.com
Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
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