Best of Kurdish Cinema
A collection of best Kurdish Films
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- DirectorSoner CanerBaris KayaStarsAlen Huseyin GursoyYavuz GürbüzSeyda SozuerRauf hopes to win over his big crush, the older Zana, with the help of the colour pink. But what does pink really look like anyways, and will he even be able to find it in his snowy little Kurdish village up in the mountains? Meanwhile, disturbing rumours sweep in from the outside world.
- DirectorHiner SaleemStarsRomen AvinianLala SarkissianIvan FranekIn a remote, isolated Yazidi Kurdish village in post-Soviet Armenia, Hamo, a widower with a pitiful pension and three worthless sons, travels daily to his wife's grave. There he meets the lovely Nina, who is communing with her late husband. The two are penniless--she works in a local bar that is about to close down, while he has been forced to start selling his meager possessions. All seems hopelessly bleak, yet when Hamo begins to court Nina, their unexpected love revitalizes them.
- DirectorBahman GhobadiStarsSoran EbrahimAvaz LatifSaddam Hossein FeysalNear the Iraqi-Turkish border on the eve of an American invasion, refugee children like 13-year-old Kak (Ebrahim), gauge and await their fate.
- DirectorHisham ZamanStarsAli Bag SalimiZheer DurhanNazmi Kirik'Letter to the King' portrays five people on a day trip from a refugee camp to Oslo, a welcome change in an otherwise monotonous life. Each and every one of them has an agenda for their trip. All five will make decisive choices on this day, as they discover happiness, humiliation, or love--or fulfill a long-awaited revenge. The five stories are tied together by a letter written by 83-year-old Mirza, who wants to hand it over to the King personally.
- DirectorShawkat Amin KorkiStarsHussein Hassan AliNazmi KirikShima MolaeiKurdish childhood friends Hussein (37) and Alan (40) direct and produce a film about the genocide of Kurdish people in Iraq, the Anfal campaign in 1988. They learn that, to achieve veracity by the means of cinema and to face their own identity, it's worth putting everything on the line - even their own life.
- DirectorHisham ZamanStarsAbdullah TaherSuzan IlirBahar OzenA sixteen-year-old boy gets wrapped in plastic, and lowered into a tank truck full of crude oil. That's how Hisham Zaman's long awaited feature film debut begins.
- DirectorL. Rezan YesilbasStarsBelçim BilginCem BenderThe prison of Diyarbakir, the setting of the story, is like the symbol of the torture experienced in the prisons in Turkey after the coup d'etat of 1980. However, in this story, I did not choose to tell the things that took place in the prison, or the political prisoners or the torture, or the political fight. Instead, I turned my camera to the little stories of the "silent" women outside the prison, who could not speak another language than Kurdish, which was forbidden in the prisons of that era.
- DirectorShawkat Amin KorkiStarsShwan AttoofHamed DiyarHamajaga HilinInside a beat up stadium in Kirkuk, Iraq, live many refugees trying to escape Sadam Hussein's administration. Asu lives with his younger brother who has lost his legs from a landmine. Next door lives Hilin, who has not been able to express her feelings. One of the only sources of happiness for these people who live amid fear of poverty and bombings is soccer. Asu gathers together the Kurdish, Arabs and Turkish in order to hold a soccer match. Although they are of different races, they become close neighbors.
- DirectorShawkat Amin KorkiStarsAdil AbdolrahmanHussein Hassan AliAba RashA road movie set in Iraq in 2003 during the fall of Saddam. Two Kurds are looking for the parents of a five-year-old boy who has been found in the street in tears. His name is Saddam too. At the same time the boy's parents are looking for him everywhere, worried because of the boy's name which is now taboo. All the attempts of the two Kurds to get rid of the child fail: neither the Americans nor the men of religion at the mosque want him. Little Saddam begins to become a real problem. In the streets and all around them, they are surrounded by the chaos and crazy atmosphere of those days, with violence always on the verge of exploding.
- DirectorBahman GhobadiStarsAyoub AhmadiRojin YounessiAmaneh Ekhtiar-diniYoung Iranian Kurdish siblings try to save the youngest of them, who is seriously ill.
- DirectorBahman GhobadiStarsBehrouz VossoughiMonica BellucciYilmaz ErdoganKurdish-Iranian poet Sahel has just been released from a thirty-year prison sentence in Iran. Now the one thing keeping him going is the thought of finding his wife, who thinks him dead for over twenty years.
- DirectorHüseyin KarabeyStarsTuncay AkdemirSelim BulutSabahettin DAGThis is the story of two women on opposite ends of a life-time, a very young, curious Jiyan and her life-weary but resistant grandmother Berfe, in order to save the person who links them to each other.
- DirectorAboozar AminiStarsYsbrant BakkerRaissa FaberDawood HilmandiAn illegal immigrant is reminded of his origin by the melodies of an instrument of his birthplace Bumiyan, Afganistan. However, the musician playing the instrument claims that the melodies aren't from Bumiyan, but from Kurdistan. But where is Kurdistan?
- DirectorHiner SaleemStarsKorkmaz ArslanGolshifteh FarahaniSuat UstaBaran, a Kurdish independence war hero, is now sheriff in Erbil, the capital city. No longer feeling useful in this society now at peace, he thinks about quitting the police force, but instead agrees to be stationed in a small valley, at the very borders of Iran, Turkey, and Iraq. It is a lawless territory, right at the heart of illegal drug, medication and alcohol trafficking. Having arrived in the small village, he refuses to bow down to Aga Azzi, the seriously corrupt tribal chief and absolute ruler of the area. Baran meets Govend, the village school teacher, who is also rejected by the villagers. Like Baran, she represents another law, that of the young and autonomous Kurdish state. Govend is all the more vulnerable as she is not a married woman.
- DirectorSerif GörenYilmaz GüneyStarsTarik AkanSerif SezerHalil ErgünWhen five Kurdish prisoners are granted one week's home leave, they find to their dismay that they face continued oppression outside of prison from their families, the culture, and the government.
- DirectorHiner SaleemStarsNazmi KirikEyam EkremBelçim BilginSet during the Iraq-Iran war in the 80s, the film tells of a tragicomic road trip set in Iraq's Kurdistan.
- DirectorBahman GhobadiStarsNegar ShaghaghiAshkan KoshanejadHamed BehdadIranian musicians Negar and Ashkan look for band members to play at a London concert - and the visas that allow them to leave Tehran to do so.
- DirectorBahman GhobadiStarsIsmail GhaffariAllah-Morad RashtianFarzin SabooniMamo, an old and legendary Kurdish musician living in Iran, plans to give one final concert in Iraqi Kurdistan. After seven months of trying to get a permit and rounding up his ten sons, he sets out for the long and troublesome journey in a derelict bus, denying a recurring vision of his own death at half moon. Halfway the party halts at a small village to pick up female singer Hesho, which will only add to the difficulty of the undertaking, as it is forbidden for Iranian women to sing in public, let alone in the company of men. But Mamo is determined to carry through, if not for the gullible antics of the bus driver.
- DirectorBahman GhobadiStarsShahab EbrahimiFaegh MohamadiAllah-Morad RashtianDuring the war between Iran and Iraq, a group of Iranian Kurd musicians set off on an almost impossible mission. They will try to find Hanareh, a singer with a magic voice who crossed the border and may now be in danger in the Iraqi Kurdistan. As in his previous films, this Kurdish director is again focusing on the oppression of his people.
- DirectorBahman GhobadiStarsNariman AnwarHelly LuvA documentary about Kurds, middle-east war and "Kurdistan", a nation with about 45m population and still without a country.
- DirectorMahmod AhmadRonahi EzaddinSami HosseinA documentary made by eight children from Kobani and Shengal in refugee camps on the border of Syria and Iraq, who recorded their own life experiences and stories in the wake of brutal attacks by ISIS.
- DirectorHisham ZamanStarsSedar Ahmad SalehBroa Ako RasolHåkon HatlenA father is forced to choose between two evils to provide for his son.
- DirectorKarzan KaderStarsZamand TahaSarwar FazilDiya MariwanThe story is about two brothers want to travel to america and the adventures that they face in the journey.
- DirectorErol MintasStarsFeyyaz DumanZübeyde RonahiNesrin CavadzadeA young Kurdish man is torn between his mother's nostalgic search of a song in her dreams and an uncertain future with his pregnant girlfriend.
- DirectorBülent ÖztürkStarsMüjde ArslanSeyithan AltiparmakEmine Korkmaz22-year old Dilan pays for her forbidden love for a young man in a neighbouring village with her life.
- DirectorAmo Bek-NazaryanStarsMaria TenaziHrachia NersisyanAvet AvetisyanImmediately prior to the Russian Revolution, a young shepherd Seydo and his girlfriend Zare struggle for their right to a happy love in a Yazidi Kurdish village in Russian Armenia.
- DirectorBatin GhobadiStarsHussein Hassan AliHelly LuvFeyyaz DumanMardan is a police officer who one day meets Leila, whose husband has disappeared. Mardan takes it on himself to solve the mystery.
- DirectorReha ErdemStarsDeniz HasgülerOnur ÜnsalYildirim SimsekJin, a guerrilla, lives in a cave and decides to escape from the organization. She finds some civilian clothes and goes down from the mountain to the city. However, the city is no safer than the mountain.
- DirectorMiraz BezarStarsSenay OrakMuhammed AlHakan KarsakDiyarbakir, in the late nineties: Two young Kurdish children are forced to live on the street after their parents have been murdered by a member of a secret state security force.
- DirectorSamira MakhmalbafStarsSaid MohamadiBehnaz JafariBahman GhobadiItinerant Kurdish teachers, carrying blackboards on their backs, look for students in the hills and villages of Iran, near the Iraqi border during the Iran-Iraq war. Said falls in with a group of old men looking for their bombed-out village; he offers to guide them, and takes as his wife Halaleh, the clan's lone woman, a widow with a young son. Reeboir attaches himself to a dozen pre-teen boys weighed down by contraband they carry across the border; they're mules, always on the move. Said and Reeboir try to teach as their potential students keep walking. Danger is close; armed soldiers patrol the skies, the roads, and the border. Is there a role for a teacher? Is there hope?
- DirectorPhilippe LioretStarsVincent LindonFirat AyverdiAudrey DanaBilal sets off on an adventure-filled journey across Europe and wants to get to England to see his love who lives there.
- DirectorNahid GhobadiBijan ZmanpiraStarsReza BehbudiAmin SadeghiMehdi SakiA government official travels across Iranian Kurdistan on a mission to stop 111 young women from committing suicide. An official selection of the prestigious, award-winning Global Lens Collection presented by the Global Film Initiative. (Farsi and Kurdish w. English subs.)
- DirectorYilmaz GüneyStarsYilmaz GüneySevgi CanHayati HamzaogluMemed is a fugitive with a sole purpose to find and execute bandits in the mountains. When a rich landowner wants to avenge the death of his father, he hires Memed as a bounty hunter.
- DirectorZeki ÖktenStarsTarik AkanMelike DemiragTuncel KurtizBecause of a local blood feud, a peasant family in eastern Turkey decides to sell its sheep in far away Ankara.
- DirectorJano RosebianiStarsKurdo GalaliPirshang BerzinjiChoman HawramiFive years following the infamous chemical and biological bombing of Halabja, Diyari, a Kurdish/ American good Samaritan, returns to his homeland to build an orphanage in what is left of Halabja. He meets Jiyan, a ten-year old orphan and a survivor of the chemical attack, doomed to live with a burn scar covering most of her right cheek.. A strong bond between the two ensues and later he names his orphanage after her. During the course of his stay in Halabja, Diyari meets a colorful bunch of townsfolk, many of whom remain physically and/or psychologically marked with the effects of the chemical agents. Among them is Jiyan's only living relative, Shérco, a twelve-year old who has also lost his family to the poison gas. While Shérco dreams of marrying her one day, Jiyan dreams of seeing flowers, a picture of which she finds on the back of a magazine. In addition to building the orphanage, Diyari brings a spark of hope and happiness to Shérco's and Jiyan's lives. However, this affair is short lived. As he leaves, the two orphans turn back to their lonely shells with very little light to look forward to - a familiar state of mind echoing throughout Halabja. Diyari departs with a promise to return, but now leaving a tearful Jiyan at the place where he first meet her - on a swing under a lonely tree on a small lonely hill.
- DirectorAbbas GhazaliEbrahim SaeediZahavi SanjaviDuring the 30 years of the Baath ruling under Sadam in Iraq thousands of Iraqi Kurds and Shiites were either killed or disappeared. Around 182,000 people lost their lives when 4500 villages and townships were destroyed in Kirkuk, Soleimanieh, Dahouk and Erbil regions with the aim to exterminate the Kurds and to arabize Kurdistan. Having found one of the mass graves after 24 years in the southern deserts of Iraq, became the basis of a movie describing the living conditions of these villages inhabited by mostly mothers, daughters, wives or sisters of those victims.
- DirectorHisham ZamanStarsRaouf SarajShler RahnomaKawa GilliA love story about two Kurds in the north of Norway.
- DirectorTaha KarimiIn 1988 the Iraqi Ba'ath party murdered and buried 182,000 Kurds in 350 mass graves. Only 10 people managed to escape. Faraj climbed out from amongst the dead and was taken to the USA by 'Human Rights Watch'. Realizing that few people were aware of the genocidal 'Anfal' massacres, Faraj formed the 'Iraqi Mass Graves Survivors' group. He returned to Kurdistan where, with four other survivors, he bought 1001 red apples and cloves and distributed them to families who had lost members. These apples and cloves became symbols of reconciliation and peace.
- DirectorNizamettin AriçStarsNizamettin AriçBezara ArsenLusika HesenBeko is a young Kurd who lives in the Turkish part of Kurdistan.
- DirectorFranz Josef GottliebStarsLex BarkerMarie VersiniRalf WolterIn Kurdistan Ahmed, the sheikh's son of Halef's Bedouin tribe, is captured by the Turkish governor's militia. Kara Ben Nemsi and Halef try to rescue him and re-meet Sir David Lindsay who is venturing to help a lady in distress.
- DirectorYüksel YavuzStarsAbdulkadir AyganBeriwanIsmail Besikçi
- DirectorMano KhalilStarsManon PfrunderIsmail ZagrosDejin Jamil KhidirThe young Swiss woman Mira searches for her lost father with the help from her Kurdish friend Ramo. The two come closer when travelling. However, the dark past and the political issues make everything difficult.
- DirectorMano KhalilStarsDavid RouillerA portrait of David Rouiller, a young Swiss man who joined the Kurdish freedom movement PKK
- DirectorHalkawt MustafaStarsAhmed AdelWrya AhmedDana AhmesTwo Kurdish little people in Iraq risk their lives to fulfill their dreams and that is to meet football hero Cristiano Ronaldo.
- DirectorKamiran BetasiStarsRuges KiriciRavo SharifWithin wars and revolutions many people become victims and many heroes, names arise, but sadness, sorrow and disasters become the share of woman. Woman in every case sacrifices but unfortunately her sacrifices are regardless, here I wanted to speak about a Kurdish woman and her sacrifices. After the collapse of Kurdish revolution in 1975 Kurds began to leave Iraqi Kurdistan towards Iran and settled in an Iranian camp, among the refugees was a Kurdish woman with her two children who left her husband who was a Peshmarga fighting the enemy. In the refugees camp there was an Iranian officer who wanted to rape this woman, but this woman tried to protect herself from the officer and she hopes to live a better life in future.