Iraqi film documents suffering of Iraq’s Yazidis

Nawar Bendari

The terrorist Islamic State group committed all types of violations against Yazidi women, especially in the northwestern Iraqi city of Mosul.

Iraqi cinema director Ali Mohamed Saeed has already completed the making of his film “Mosul 980” to throw light on the genocide of ethnic Yazidis in Iraq since the Islamic State overran cities where there are concentrations of the Yazidis.

Islamic State terrorists kidnapped Yazidi children and women and killed youth and elderly men.

The film offers an insight into the destruction the war wrought on everything in Iraq, especially the Yazidi minority.

Suffering

Seventeen-year-old Yazidi girl Durra is the main character in the film. She is kidnapped y Islamic State terrorists. She tries to escape from Mosul, wearing an Islamic State fighter’s uniform. She can only escape Mosul in a booby-trapped vehicle. She then finds herself at the center of the city.

The film was made inside Mosul itself, a great adventure for the makers of the film. Filmmakers narrowly escaped death when two explosive devices went off during the making of the film. They saw the remains of dozens of Iraqis on the streets and the alleyways of the city.

The film qualified for participation at the Berlin International Film Festival. It participated in a large number of other international film events. It is also nominated for the Oscars in 2020.

Yazidi women

Yazidis bore the brunt of the brutality of the Islamic State. In February this year, a British special combat group entering the eastern Syrian village of Baghuz found the dilapidated heads of 50 Yazidi women in rubbish baskets.

Yazidi women surviving the Islamic State occupation of Iraqi and Syrian cities still suffer the traumas they experienced at the hands of the terrorists of the organization. Apart from the traumatic disorders they suffer, they live in camps that lack the simplest basics of life.

Islamic State terrorists used all forms of torture with Yazidi women who refuse to obey their orders, including electrocuting. They forced them to watch videos in which other Yazidi women were slaughtered.

The Islamic State overran Srinagar, where there is the largest concentration of Yazidis in the northwestern Iraqi province of Nineveh, in March 2014.

The terrorists of the organization kidnapped 6,500 Yazidi civilians.

There are around 550,000 Yazidis in Iraq, according to a 2015 survey by the United Nations.