Mano Khalil prepares new film about Kurds in Rojava

Kurdish filmmaker Mano Khalil announced today that he plans to produce a feature-length film exploring key episodes in the history of Kurds in Rojava, beginning with the Shahrazad Cinema fire in Amuda, followed by the policies of the exceptional census, land seizures, and the implementation of the Arab Belt project, and culminating in the war against ISIS mercenaries.

In a post on his Facebook page, Khalil said he had received messages from members of the Kurdish people over the years asking why he had not made a film about the Amuda cinema fire. He noted that he had been considering a cinematic project addressing the “tragedies of the Kurds in Western Kurdistan” for some time.

Khalil added that the project seeks to connect the past, present, and future and document a history of “injustice, repression, and dispossession,” stressing that the film would not be an act of revenge but rather an attempt to recover events and memories that he believes have been marginalized and silenced.

He noted that producing the film to professional standards, enabling its international distribution and transforming it into a cinematic record, would require a substantial budget. Given the project’s historical scope, it would need sets, costumes, vehicles, filming locations, and other resources to recreate different historical periods.

He noted that Fram Film Production Company would undertake a large part of the production process, but stressed the need for financial support from relevant Kurdish institutions, explaining that securing the necessary funding would allow the project to move forward.

The announcement of the film by Mano Khalil, 62, who hails from Qamishlo, follows his previous cinematic work, Neighbors, which explored aspects of Kurdish life and the social and political challenges Kurds faced in relation to identity, peaceful coexistence, and the impact of dictatorship and repression in Syria in the early 1980s under the former Baathist regime.