ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The third edition of the Chicago Kurdish Film Festival is set to kick off next Saturday, aiming to bring Kurdish stories and experiences to wider audiences through cinema and highlight aspects of Kurdish history, society and culture that are often overlooked, one of the festival's co-organizers said.
“These events are especially important because too often, the power of art, narrative, and storytelling is overlooked in discussions about Kurdistan and the Kurdish cause,” Dalal Hassane told Rudaw’s Niyaz Mustafa on Saturday.
The two-day festival will feature 18 films in the Sorani and Kurmanji dialects of Kurdish, including File No. 1, Who Am I? Footprints of Ants and Night and Fog in Kurdistan, alongside other films and documentaries.
Organized by the Kurdish Cultural Center of Illinois, the festival brings together Kurdish filmmakers and audiences from Chicago and across the US Midwest.
Hassane said organizers have invited community members to attend the screenings and support the participating filmmakers.
The Chicago event is among several festivals promoting Kurdish cinema in the United States.
The New York Kurdish Film Festival (NYKFF), which recently held its 10th edition, screened 30 films over six days, bringing together Kurdish filmmakers from the Kurdistan Region and Kurdish areas of Syria, Turkey and Iran as well as the diaspora. Its program featured short films, feature films, documentaries, animation and student productions.
Hassane said cinema provides a platform to explore personal experiences of state violence, societal divisions and occupation through the perspectives of those directly affected.
“Through this festival, we invite attendees to embrace art’s imaginative quality and its ability to bring to life the endless stories rooted in our beloved Kurdistan,” she said.
For Hassane, who was born and raised in the United States, the festival also offers members of the Kurdish diaspora an opportunity to reconnect with their cultural heritage.
