The 5th Rojava International Film Festival opened in Qamishlo on the 65th anniversary of the Amûdê Cinema Fire. This year’s festival transformed into a broad international gathering with the participation of 85 films and 22 screenplays, becoming a historic moment that brought together people from many countries and stood as an important cultural expression of collective unity.
In addition to participants from Rojava, the festival drew guests, directors, producers and cinema workers from Northern Kurdistan (Bakur), Southern Kurdistan (Başur) and numerous countries around the world. Among the participants was German documentary filmmaker Bernd Schoch, who shared his impressions of Rojava in an assessment for ANF.
Schoch, who travelled from Germany to attend the festival, described his first encounter with Rojava’s social organisation and the festival preparations as follows: “This is my first time seeing Rojava. I am genuinely astonished by the organisation of society and by the festival being held here. Festivals require extensive and demanding work. I have experience with this from my involvement in the preparations of the documentary festival in Hamburg, but here, every day, I find myself surprised by something new.”
Schoch also shared his observations about the films he watched at the festival and said: “I watched around seven films, and each of them had a completely different theme. Some were structured around press files, but the conceptual flow and thematic coherence of certain films genuinely impressed me. This motivated me to watch even more films and learn something from each of them. What caught my attention most was the strong connection between the methods of struggle shown in the films and the links drawn between recent history and the current conditions of war.”
Schoch highlighted the importance of films that shed light on social issues and added that cinema could play a problem-solving role in the future: “My hope is that films will form a path toward addressing the problems of society. But today, no matter what film is made, it carries the colour of conflict, that is the reality of our time. For this reason, my wish is for peace and freedom to be secured for the people of this region, and for society to advance in every field.”