Night and Fog in Kurdistan

Overview

The Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking people of what is now Iraqi Kurdistan, have been oft persecuted for maintaining their traditional culture, including a unique religion based on pre-Zoroastrian beliefs. This rendered them a special target for ISIS, which in 2014 massacred and abducted thousands in Shingal, the largest Yazidi-majority city. Kurdish director Shilan Saadi—beset by her own childhood memories of the Iran–Iraq War—runs a filmmaking workshop for survivors of Shingal, teaching seven teenaged girls to document their lives in a Turkish refugee camp. Bonds are forged and strengthened, but soon fray as one after another departs for Europe. Taking a mixed-media approach to the Yazidi genocide and its aftermath, Saadi and her collaborators produce an uncannily powerful group portrait, each frame a witness to perseverance and haunted by absence. - Josh Martin, Special Programs & Feature Film Programmer, Austin Asian American Film Festival