The International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA) is in its 20th
year, and claims to be the biggest of its kind in the world. It's a marketplace
where film buyers, filmmakers, and film lovers all come together for screenings
that cover a vast range of non-fiction topics. Often the films give a deeper
insight into geo-political hotspots than what is normally available in the news
media.
One such film is Sozdar, She Who Lives Her Promise, which just premiered at the
IDFA. The central figure in the film is Nuriye Kesbir, who has named herself
Sozdar. She is a leader in the Kurdish Workers Party, also known as the PKK, a
rebel separatist movement with a stronghold in the Kurdish mountains on the
border of Turkey and Northern Iraq. The director of the film, Annegriet Wietsma,
was drawn to the idea of a woman fighter.
"I wanted to make a movie already for decades about the Kurdish problem but I
always hesitated, because the level of testosterone was a bit too high for me.
But then I read about this woman who was in Dutch jail. She was having a hunger
strike, and I thought: 'This is my chance.'"
Alleged terrorist
On a trip to Europe in 2001, Kesbir was arrested at the airport in the
Netherlands. She spent several years fighting extradition to Turkey. Wietsma
says,
"For the Turkish she is a terrorist. Therefore they ask for her extradition
wherever she will be. The judge didn't want to extradite her because the Turkish
government didn't want to give guarantees that she would have a fair trail and
not be tortured, raped, whatever.
Because they said: 'We just don't torture and don't rape so we don't do it with
her either.' And the Dutch judge said: 'Well, we keep her here until we have
these guarantees.'"
The film also gives insight into the Kurdish community living in Europe.
"Everybody is in motion. Nobody knows exactly: 'Am I Kurdish, am I Western, am I
Turkish, what am I?' So that's what you see also with how people dress and
behave."
Bombing
In the end, Kesbir escaped back to Kurdistan without telling anyone. Wietsma was
able to follow her later because of contacts she had made in the Kurdish
movement. She speaks of the danger she encountered there:
"I waited for the less dangerous period. Of course it's always dangerous because
the week before I went two guys were hit by a grenade and killed. Of course it's
a dangerous part of the world. Particularly now. The regions where I filmed are
now in real danger and there's man to man fighting, there's grenades falling
from the air by the Turkish army."
Apparently Kesbir is still in safety. As for what will happen next, Wietsma
offers this opinion:
"Nobody will know what will come in the next couple of months. My personal
conviction is: you can bomb these 10,000 girls and boys and men and women in
this mountainous region. The guerrillas. But you never can bomb and erase the
problem of 40 million Kurds being an unwanted people. You can't bomb that
problem."
