ERBIL, Kurdistan Region- Kurdish filmmaker Shawkat Amin’s latest picture, Memories on Stone, was screened in cinemas across Switzerland in December after winning prestigious awards in Brisbane, Australia and Abu Dhabi earlier this year.
The film was also on the list of contenders for best foreign movie at the 24th Thusis film festival in Switzerland, held between December 4-9. A panel discussion followed the festival screening.
Earlier this year at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, the UNESCO prize for “outstanding contribution to the promotion and preservation of cultural diversity through film” was awarded to Amin for his latest film.
The late Kurdish documentary filmmaker, Taha Karimi, who was killed in a car accident last year, was also honored posthumously at the Asia Pacific for 1001 Apples as best documentary.
“I dedicate this award to the people of Kurdistan Region who resisted genocide in the past and resist the Islamic State now and also to my late friend and filmmaker, Taha Karimi, who showed the world the hideous face of the genocidal Anfal through his documentary,” Amin said when receiving the UNESCO award.
Shawkat Amin Korki was born in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region in 1973. He studied cinema and has been working in theater and television since the early 1990s. He has directed two other movies, Kick offs and Crossing the Dust.
Memories on Stone offers an insight into the challenges of making films in the Kurdistan Region. It won the Black Pearl Award for Best Film from the Arab World in November.
The plot unfolds as producing a movie in postwar Kurdistan turns out to be difficult and the two would-be filmmakers struggle to find a lead actress to star in their picture.
