Why Iraq's Yazidis are upset over new film depicting IS massacres
Women who suffered at the hand of the Islamic State are now being subjected to further humiliation, in the opinion of the Yazidi community, which is protesting a film on the topic that they say is inaccurate and misleading.
"The Dark Wind," a film directed by Hussein Hassan, sparked a large-scale objection among Yazidis at this year's Duhok International Film Festival.
The film was screened the first day of the festival, held Sept. 9-16 in Dahuk, Iraqi Kurdistan, despite protesters' claims that the film presents a bad image and twists facts about Yazidi women who were captured by the Islamic State (IS) and escaped its grip.
Murad Ismael, the executive director for the Houston-based nonprofit Yazda, told Al-Monitor, “The [one] scene alone — where a Yazidi father tells his survivor daughter that she does not befit them, and puts her at gunpoint — is enough [for us] to perceive [the film] as offending to Yazidis.”
The Yazidi community had previously objected to the film and demanded that changes be made. Yet, the director did not respond to their call, Qader Hassan, a Yazidi activist, told Al-Monitor. He said the Yazidi Lalish Dahuk cultural center asked permission to watch the entire film before the festival, following which "we expressed reservations to the director [who attended the cultural center showing] and asked him to delete offensive scenes. He did not delete them, although he promised to do so.”
