Cinema Shorts: Identity, Loss & War

Cheeese…Hope Dies Last – Hüseyin Tabak (Turkey/Germany, 2008, 12 mins)

As bombs drop around them, an Iraqi Kurdish family – grandfather, mother, father and two children – sits underground in the basement of their destroyed house waiting for the arrival of American troops to save them.  Shot in black-and-white and peppered with dark humor throughout, Cheeese offers a sobering Kurdish perspective on the 2003 American invasion of Iraq.

Shadow and Wind – Arin Inan Arslan (Turkey, 2006, 15 mins)

Shot in black-and-white with no dialogue in the bleak stony village of Viransehir-Urfa in southeast Turkey, Shadow and Wind uses elements of surrealism and a haunting soundtrack to trace the waking dream of a boy living in a poor Kurdish village.  A richly cinematic meditation on identity and loss.

The Border – Zahavi Sanjavi (Iraq, 2005, 27 mins)

A proud Kurdish patriarch tries to deliver his daughter for marriage over a barbed-wired border, but faces a heavily armed military unit that demands her return.  Rallying his family and the villagers on both sides of the border, the patriarch attempts to defy the inhumane and arbitrary constraints placed upon his community.

My Beautiful Son Will Be The King – Salem Salavati (Iran, 2008, 9 mins)

Combining abstract and realistic narrative styles, My Beautiful Son Will Be The King tells the story of a rural family struggling to look after their disabled child.  Director Salem Salavati plays with preconceived ideas of disability with powerful results.