Don't Forget Me

A priceless tablet of Gilgamesh, the oldest and most important work of literature is stolen from a museum. A security guard vows to do whatever it takes to get it back from a group of smugglers. Along the way, he faces his own inner demons.

In the winter of 1988, in the depths of the Iraq/Iran war, the border town of Halabja was attacked by chemical weapons with all its people and their different stories.

In Syria, the new government that overthrew Bashar al-Assad's regime on 8 December 2024 has just signed a historic agreement with the Kurds in the north-east of the country. In the heart of a country ravaged by more than 13 years of civil war, this autonomous administration of Syrian Kurdistan could well be integrated into a country that is in need of reconstruction and whose unity remains fragile. But in the north, the war has not stopped. A few kilometres away, neighbouring Turkey has been stepping up its attacks on Rojava for years, while militia abuses persist and the threat of Islamic State continues to loom. From Kobane to Raqqa via the Al-Hol prison camp... For this new long-form feature, Blast took to the roads of northern Syria in January 2025.

Turtles Can Fly tells the story of a group of young children near the Turkey-Iraq border. They clean up mines and wait for the Saddam regime to fall.

Casimê Celîl was born into a Yezidi Kurdish family in 1908, in a village called Kızılkule, located in Digor, Kars. The village and family life, which he longed to remember throughout his life, ends with the massacre they endured in 1918. During his long road to Erivan, Armenia, he lost all his family members. Left all alone, Casim was placed into an orphanage and was forced to change his name. To remember who he was and where he came from, every morning he repeated the mantra “Navê min Casim e, Ez kurê Celîlim, Ez ji gundê Qizilquleyê Dîgorê me, Ez Kurdim, Kurdê Êzîdî me”, which translates to: “My name is Casim, I am the son of Celîl, I come from the village of Kızılkule in Digor, I am a Kurd, and I am Yezidi”. He clings to every piece of his culture he can find, reads, and saves whatever Kurdish literature or art he comes across. As the year’s pass, Casim finds himself with an impressive collection of Kurdish culture and history.

A unique interview with Tooba Gondal, the woman who groomed and lured scores of Western women to join ISIS. Using social media, she became a deadly matchmaker, recruiting a number of high-profile “jihadi brides” for ISIS militants in Syria: she allegedly helped organise the transporting of three British schoolgirls, including Shamima Begum, to Syria.

Documentary on Sakine Cansız (Sara), the Kurdish revolutionary and PKK co-founder killed in Paris in January 2013 by Turkish agents.

In a snowy Kurdish mountain village, in the east of Turkey, an old woman Berfé and her granddaughter Jiyan are distressed. The only man in the household, Temo, the son of one and the father of the other, was arrested by the Turkish military. The commanding officer has been told that the villagers are hiding weapons, so he arrested all the men and announced that they will be kept in prison until their families hand over the weapons. The problem is that there are no weapons in the village. Desperate, Berfé and Jiyan embark on a long journey, in search of a gun which they could exchange for their beloved Temo. Will the old woman and her innocent granddaughter find a way out of the inextricable Kurdish identity conflict?

After dealing with the Shut in the Balkans, Kara Ben-Nemsi ('Karl the German') receives a firman (precious passport) from the padishah (Ottoman sultan) before he continues his travels through Kurdistan. Achmed El Corda, the son of Halef's Hadedhin Beduin tribe's sheik Mohammed Emin, has been captured by the machredsh (Turkish governor) of Mossul for resisting water seizure by his Turkish troops. Kara takes charge of the rescue.

An animated short documentary crafted by people on the move in the refugee camp of the island of Lesbos (GR), following the story of Orhan, a Syrian Kurd who fled war with his family in 2013, seeking safety in Turkey—only to find that peace was still a distant dream.

Aslı Erdoğan, world-renowned author and activist, has fallen into silence after she fled to Germany. Incomplete Sentences is a feature documentary on her literature and life, leading to exile in Frankfurt, after the Turkish regime’s oppression results in her unlawful imprisonment. Now, she struggles in exile while everybody is waiting for her to write again. Right after getting out of prison Aslı starts telling her story to the director, wandering in the streets of Istanbul she recites parts from her books and explains the stories behind. When Aslı goes to Germany to receive the Erich Maria Remarque Award she cannot return; thus her exile, which she likens to a semi-open prison, begins. As her health deteriorates and keeps her from writing, the tragedy in her books becomes her own reality.

When five Kurdish prisoners are granted one week's home leave, they find to their dismay that they face continued oppression outside of prison from their families, the culture, and the government.

Turkey's history has been shaped by two major political figures: Mustafa Kemal (1881-1934), known as Atatürk, the Father of the Turks, founder of the modern state, and the current president Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan, who apparently wants Turkey to regain the political and military pre-eminence it had as an empire under the Ottoman dynasty.

Sivan Encü, a young Kurdish man, provided for his family by "smuggling" through the Turkish-Iraqi border. When he was murdered in the 2011 Robozik (Roboski) Massacre, the responsibility of family's welfare was taken over by his younger brother Sinan, who lost his life in an unfortunate accident. This is the story of their grief-stricken mother Heyam and her resilience. Alongside Heyam's struggle, the film brings the voices of Robozik elders and notables to the forefront, who have experienced first-hand the social, political and economic dimensions of smuggling, which has been the backbone of survival for the locals for many generations.

This anthropological documentary introduces the Yezidis, a little-known minority of Northern Iraq, and follows the tour of their most sacred object, the Standard of the Peacock through the settlements of Sinjar Mountain, where the traditional way of life and customs are undergoing a rapid change, due to the political, economic and social shifts of the last decades.

The documentary The Silent Revolution explains the revolution involving nearly 3 million kurds living in Syria. With the outbreak of the civil war —in the frame of the called ‘Arab Spring'— the Kurds of Syria have taken advantage of the context to fight for their political and cultural recognition and thus end the repression that started more than 50 years ago.

Documentary on the Turkish invasion of Afrin in Northern Syria in 2018.

The Kurdish Iraqi poet and actor Zeravan Khalil travels with his dog through an Alpine gorge after fleeing from IS war and genocide. As he remembers the abomination, he writes a poem with the title “You drive me mad” in Kurmanji Kurdish. In his home country, Yazidic Kurds are forbidden to work in his profession. Then he eats his apple and wanders through Europe’s middle with more hope.

Despite being outnumbered and outgunned, a female Kurdish fighter guides her fellow fighters in the resistance to defend their city, Kobanê, from the deadly threat of ISIS. A real story of war, sacrifice, love and hope that kept the whole world on tenterhooks.

In a first-person documentary, Diako Yazdani, a political refugee in France, returns to see his family in Iraqi Kurdistan and introduces them to a 23-year-old gay man from Kojin who seeks to exist in a society where he seems unable to find its place. With humor and poetry, the director delivers a moving portrait where the meetings of each other invite to a universal reflection on the difference.