Kurdish Film Festivals around the world issued a statement calling on everyone to break the silence on the attacks against Northern and Eastern Syria.
The statement said: “As Kurdish Film Festivals around the world, we speak not only as cultural platforms, but as witnesses. Kurdish cinema has long existed as an act of resistance against denial, erasure, and systematic violence. Through film, Kurdish lives have insisted on being seen, heard, and remembered.
Today, Kurdistan is once again under attack.
Rojava (North and East of Syria) — Western Kurdistan as an integral part of Kurdistan — is not an abstraction. It is a grassroots democratic system built through immense sacrifice, grounded in democratic self-administration, women’s liberation, and coexistence among peoples. At the same time, East of Kurdistan (Rojhilat) continues to face systematic repression of Kurdish identity, culture, and dissent, where recent uprisings have been met with extreme violence, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Kurds. The ongoing struggle there is inseparable from the struggle unfolding in Rojava and across Kurdistan.”
The statement added: “Rojava is one of the most systematically targeted spaces in the region precisely because it challenges dominant systems of power, patriarchy, and authoritarianism. Attacks on Rojava are not only military or political acts; they are acts of cultural destruction. They seek to dismantle collective memory, silence dissenting voices, and erase alternative futures. When filmmakers, artists, and cultural workers are forced into displacement or silence, what is destroyed is not only infrastructure, but imagination itself.
Kurdish cinema has long confronted this reality. Our films document what is denied, mourn what is destroyed, and affirm what survives. For Kurds, cinema is not entertainment — it is testimony, resistance, and political presence.
Today is the moment to stand openly and without ambiguity for the values that hold Kurdish identity together: Jin, Jiyan, Azadî (Woman, Life, Freedom).”
The statement continued: “We call on the global public, cultural workers, filmmakers, critics, journalists, programmers, and all those who claim to defend freedom of expression and human rights to break their silence. Neutrality in the face of ongoing violence is not neutrality — it is complicity.
The world must recognize that the destruction of Rojava is the destruction of a political and cultural alternative. Silence allows this destruction to continue.
As Kurdish Film Festivals, we reaffirm our commitment to using our platforms to amplify voices from North and East Syria, to defend cultural production under threat, and to insist that Kurdish lives and stories matter — not symbolically, but politically.
Cinema remembers. Cinema resists. Cinema demands accountability.”
