Rojava İnternational Film Festival

ROJAVA INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF CINEMA: CINEMA AS THE VOICE OF RESISTANCE AND SOLIDARITY
Shared stories, Cinema of Freedom.
The Rojava International Festival of Cinema in the lands of the Middle East is a symbol of the struggle for freedom. This year the festival aims to bring together filmmakers, audience and artists from all four parts of the world.
We don´t see our festival only as a part of art; but instead we see it as a part of memory, a language of resistance and an expression of freedom. Our festival is open to all stories of opressed peoples, stories of women, of refugees and all oppressed identities.
Rojava became a big example for the world with its revolutionary values and the fact that it takes the construction of peoples brotherhood, diversity of culture and ecological life as its foundation. Our festival builds up on these values and expresses the voices that have been silenced, the unseen faces and suppressed memories on the white screen. The capitalist and colonialist mindset has created a big rupture, contradiction and conflict between people and culture. Our festival brings out the characteristics of being united, longing for freedom and communalism in cinema and aims to create shared values and stories.
Our slogan is “Shared stories, Cinema of Freedom”. This slogan is a invitation and a manifest. “Shared stories” shows how different peoples and different humans can unite experiences and create a bigger narrative out of it. We believe that shared stories become the reason for creating collective memory and values and against the allienation of society, we believe that peoples solidarity and art will develop. For us, every film is one part of the collective memory and all cinema workers are creators of this memory.
“Cinema of Freedom” shows the necessity that these stories are being told in a clear, unbiased and creative way. This can, in the clearest and strongest way, happen in a free society. Therefor we see the Cinema of Freedom at the same time as a language of search and the attempt for a free society.
During the festival there will be exposition, panels and meetings with the filmmakers. Through these events we hope to develop an alternative and communalist language of cinema for discussion and that the new generation of cinema enthusiasts, the basis for production, will be created.
The Rojava International Festival of Cinema through a language that can overcome borders, with a narrative of peace, resistance and freedom, will continue.
Comitee of The Rojava International Festival of Cinema