ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Dutch-Kurdish filmmaker Reber Dosky had the rare pleasure of being both an award nominee and a jury member at this year's edition of the prestigious Netherlands Film Festival, which draws to a close today.
Dosky was on the judging panel for the Best Short Documentary at the festival, while his film Sidik and the Panther, made in 2019, was nominated for the Golden Calf for Best Long Documentary. The 83-minute long film tells the true story of Mohammed Sidik, a Kurd from Barzan who has spent 25 years searching for a once common snow leopard in the war-scarred mountains of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
In an interview aired by Rudaw on Friday, Dosky said he met Sidik on the sidelines of the Duhok International Film festival back in 2013.
"Though Kurdistan is not a state, we have been autonomous since 1992. Yet, our neighbors bombard us. Mohamed Sidik says that if we discover leopards live in our mountains in Kurdistan, that could help the area become an international reserve," Dosky told Rudaw. "In which case, any kind of bombings on Kurdistan will resonate internationally."
Bombed by neighbours Turkey and Iran for decades now, the Kurdistan Region's mountainous border areas have seen artillery fire and airstrikes force locals to desert their homes in fear. An end to the bombing in the near future looks unlikely. with Iran and Turkey vowing in early September to keep up coordinated attacks on armed Kurdish groups mainly nesting across the Kurdistan Region's mountainous regions.
In the northeast Syrian region of Rojava, Turkey went ahead with a long-threatened operation against the Kurdish-led, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in October 2019 after a green light from US president Donald Trump, despite international outcry.
"Kurds in Kurdistan [Region] and Rojava fought a great war against Daesh. More than 20,000 people [Peshmerga and fighters] fell victim," he said referring to the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS). "What did Trump do? He pulled out his troops from Rojava, the Turkish government then came into Rojava and captured Sari Kani and Afrin. This means it will happen to the Kurdistan [Region] as well. If we have tigers and our country is protected on an international level, the Turkish and Iranian governments cannot interfere."
"As Kurds, we have always endured grief. We have lost our faith in humans, so we turn to the animals," the filmmaker said.
Dosky is no stranger to awards for his filmmaking, with Sidik and the Panther having won the award for Best Dutch Documentary at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in November 2019. He won the same award in 2016 for Radio Kobani, a film Dosky both wrote and directed about one young Kurdish woman's quest to document the fall of ISIS in her homeland.
Radio Kobani also won the Golden Leaf for Best Kurdish Documentary at the 5th Duhok International Film Festival in 2017.
