Film Screening: Reşeba – The Dark Wind

»Reşeba – The Dark Wind« tells of a Yezidi lovers who want to marry and whose happiness is destroyed by the terror of the IS.

It is the first feature film about the genocide committed against Yezidis by the IS. In a straight line the film tells the story of the summer of 2014 in Iraq. It shows the trials and tribulations that the fiancé, his severely traumatized wife and her family must endure. »Reşeba – The Dark Wind« becomes more and more silent in its haunting images of despair and hopelessness, not without giving a last spark of hope at the end.

The feature film by the Iraqi-Kurdish director and actor Hussein Hassan exemplifies thousands of fates after the tragic events of July 2014, when the IS launched a comprehensive attack against all non-Muslims. More than 5,000 Yezidi women were raped, sold as slaves, forced to convert to Islam against the religious laws of their religion, which had been established long before Christianity, and after repeated abuse, some of them were sold back to their families. Many Yezidis lost their homes, have been living in refugee camps ever since and are trying to emigrate to Europe.

Almost all the supporting actors in the film are actually victims of the war. Hassan's film, which received an award at the Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival, among others, focuses entirely on the traumatization of the immediate victims and the complete overtaxing of their relatives. In contrast, the fighters of the IS remain consciously faceless, appearing as an intangible threat.

The film was made under extremely difficult production conditions, and it was made in close temporal and geographical proximity to the events. When the terrorist militia Islamic State attacked the region around the Iraqi city of Mosul in the summer of 2014, Kurdish director Hussein Hassan and Berlin film producer Mehmet Aktas were on location.

The number of  places is limited.