Khadija C. Baker (Syria/Canada, 2007, 2 mins)


“Totico”("crazy" in Kurdish) is a short animation by Canadian-based Kurdish visual artist Khadija C. Baker. Using melted chocolate and henna to hand-draw images onto glass, Baker creates a bewitching tale of two roosters.

Müjde Arslan (Turkey, 2009, 13 mins)


The latest film by female director Müjde Arslan, The Seed is a gracefully wrought tale about an elderly Kurdish man who loses his wife. Poverty, loneliness, loss and survival are all examined under Arslan’s thoughtful lens.

Ashkan Ahmadi (Iran, YEAR????, 14 mins)
Co-produced by United Women of Kurdistan

As villagers flee fighting, a stoic elderly woman stays behind to slowly bake bread and defend her people.  Oven offers a brilliant and unusual insight into the sacrifices made by women in wartime and the often painful issue of polygamy.

Sattar Chamani Gol (Iran, 2008, 10 mins)

“Come on, Chief, there is no difference between Iran and Iraq, we are all relatives.”  So a group of Kurdish men, trying to cross the Iraq-Iran border to bring an Iraqi Kurdish bride to her Iranian Kurdish husband’s home for their wedding and new life together, argue with a lone border guard.  Tensions mount as the guard refuses to allow them passage, threatening both families’ honor and sense of freedom.

Hüseyin Tabak (Turkey/Germany, 2008, 12 mins)

As bombs drop around them, an Iraqi Kurdish family – grandfather, mother, father and two children – sits underground in the basement of their destroyed house waiting for the arrival of American troops to save them.  Shot in black-and-white and peppered with dark humor throughout, Cheeese offers a sobering Kurdish perspective on the 2003 American invasion of Iraq.