ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – French journalist Caroline Fourest’s new feature film, about Kurdish female fighters, is set to be released in October.
She told Kurdistan 24 in an exclusive interview that, as the writer and director of Soeurs d’Armes (Sisters in Arms), she wants to highlight what has united Kurdish fighters under one flag: their resistance against the Islamic State.
“It recounts the darkest stories of oppression through what actually happened to the Yezidis and the brightest stories of courage, that of the Kurdish fighters and Kurds in general,” she said. “I would like the whole world to know what they have done for us.”
Fighting religious extremism
For 20 years, Fourest has reported on the threat posed by religious extremists to women’s rights.
“Given that I have been targeted by Islamist fundamentalists for years, and after the January 7 [2015] attack on the [Charlie Hebdo] newspaper where I lost a great deal of friends, I could no longer fight fundamentalist propaganda without my regular tools – writing and words.”
She said that she was so enraged by the brutality of Islamic State fighters that she almost considered going “to the front to support all those fighting. When the first stories of Yezidi women abducted by ISIS came out, I finally understood how to be useful - from behind the camera lens. I decided to make a film, but an epic feature worthy of both the moment, the fighters, and this war.”
The movie tells the story from several points of view: a young Yezidi woman named Zara who escapes the Islamic State and joins the Kurdish resistance, a Kurdish Peshmerga colonel, a Kurdish guerilla commander, and international volunteers who join the fight against the extremist group.
“In the film, there is an Italian anarchist, a former American soldier, two French (one Jewish, the other of Algerian origin), and a Kurd from the diaspora.”
A dream of Kurdish unity
One of the major goals of the movie is to show how Kurds, despite their various divisions, fought together against the Islamic State and saved the world from this threat, she said. “For centuries, politics and the game of states has been striving to divide the Kurds to better rule [them]. I like the idea that a film can bring them together [using] fiction.”
The film shows footage from multiple Kurdish factions, including fighters from the Iranian Kurdish (Rojhilati) PAK party, Yezidi Peshmerga, and the Kurdish Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) in Syria.
“My utopia is to pay homage to all the Kurds without distinguishing them, so that one day they will remember that they have this victory in common, and perhaps a common future.”
She added that non-Kurds will not likely make the distinction between the different Kurdish factions, such as female fighters from the YPJ or Peshmerga forces.
“Seeing the film, they will simply say, ‘The Kurds have saved us. We must not forget them,’ neither when the Turks bomb them in Syria, nor when Iraqi Kurdistan claims independence.”
For this reason, she also created a fictional flag “that I drew and which is inspired by the colors of Kurdistan. I know it will be confusing for those who know well the field, but you will see guerrilla uniforms and Peshmerga fighting side by side in this film. This is not the reality, but it is the truth of this war.”