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Documentary about jailed ISIS fighters is Canada's international entry for 2024 Oscars
I'm kicking myself for not looking at the Hot Docs schedule this spring because I missed Rojek, by Montréal Kurdish filmmaker Zaynê Akyol. And now it's Canada's submission to the Oscars. Her previous film, Gulîstan, about women fighting in Rojava, was phenomenal.
This film features interviews with ISIS militants and families detained at Al-Hol, the miserable prison camp that the SDF has setup in the desert after capturing them. The Rojava administration has been begging countries to repatriate their nationals. So far, only the U.S. has fully repatriated its people, and Canada has repatriated some, under secret trials or some other mysterious process. The UK has famously renounced the citizenship of Shamina Begum and Jack Letts, amongst others, washing its hands of the problem. Many of these people are still hardcore jihadists--some of them have been radicalized further in the camp. Some women have been killed by other women for collaborating with their jailers. Some of the women detained were Yezidi slaves, which were freed once identified, sometimes after years of captivity. It's possible that there are still some Yezidi (or other) slaves in the camp, bullied into silence. Many children, some brought to the caliphate, some born there, some born in the camp, are detained there, usually along with their mothers. It's such an immense clusterfuck. I find Akyol courageous to tackle this topic head-on, which wasn't even the reason she went to film in Rojava for, as discussed in the review below.
Une très intéressante critique ici, qui discute des changements de parcours de Akyol.
Trailer with English subtitles:
I'm kicking myself for not looking at the Hot Docs schedule this spring because I missed Rojek, by Montréal Kurdish filmmaker Zaynê Akyol. And now it's Canada's submission to the Oscars. Her previous film, Gulîstan, about women fighting in Rojava, was phenomenal.
This film features interviews with ISIS militants and families detained at Al-Hol, the miserable prison camp that the SDF has setup in the desert after capturing them. The Rojava administration has been begging countries to repatriate their nationals. So far, only the U.S. has fully repatriated its people, and Canada has repatriated some, under secret trials or some other mysterious process. The UK has famously renounced the citizenship of Shamina Begum and Jack Letts, amongst others, washing its hands of the problem. Many of these people are still hardcore jihadists--some of them have been radicalized further in the camp. Some women have been killed by other women for collaborating with their jailers. Some of the women detained were Yezidi slaves, which were freed once identified, sometimes after years of captivity. It's possible that there are still some Yezidi (or other) slaves in the camp, bullied into silence. Many children, some brought to the caliphate, some born there, some born in the camp, are detained there, usually along with their mothers. It's such an immense clusterfuck. I find Akyol courageous to tackle this topic head-on, which wasn't even the reason she went to film in Rojava for, as discussed in the review below.
Une très intéressante critique ici, qui discute des changements de parcours de Akyol.
Une autre critique intéressante.
An English-language review. All three reviews and complementary of each other.
Trailer with French subtitles:
Trailer with English subtitles:
