When ISIS took their homes, families and city, one group of men fought to take it all back. Based on true events, this is the story of the Nineveh SWAT team, a renegade police unit who waged a guerrilla operation against ISIS in a desperate struggle to save their home city of Mosul.
Two stories separated by 1400 years. After losing his mother in the midst of a war-torn country, an Iraqi child learns the importance and power of patience by discovering the historical story of Lady Fatima and her suffering.
Kamal resolves to change his life for the better, and so leaves Belgium to help victims of the war in Syria. But when he arrives, he is forced to join a militia and is left stranded in Raqqa. Back home, his younger brother Nassim quickly becomes easy prey for radical recruiters, who promise to reunite him with his brother. Their mother, Leila, fights to protect the only thing she has left: her youngest son.
In a war-torn Middle Eastern city where music has been banned by Islamic extremists, Karim, a brilliant musician, struggles to rebuild his destroyed piano while trying to escape to Europe.
Rojda, a native of Iraqi Kurdistan and a soldier in the German army, travels to a refugee camp in Greece where she manages to meet her mother, who has bad news about her sister Dilan.
An Iraqi journalist joins an army of uneasy allies and unforgettable characters in the epic battle to liberate the city of Mosul from the Islamic State.
Paris, spring 2015. Faustine travels to Syria with her little son to join ISIS; but, once in Raqqa, she soon realizes the hell she is gotten herself into. Her husband Sylvain quickly understands that the French government is powerless to help him, so he plans with some friends a high-risk extraction operation to get his family back.
Bahar, the commanding officer of the Daughters of the Sun, a battalion made up entirely of Kurdish female soldiers, is on the cusp of liberating their town, which has been overrun by ISIS extremists.
Shot over three years on the borders between Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria and Lebanon, the film depicts the everyday struggles of people attempting to rebuild their lives amongst the devastating effects of civil wars, dictatorships, foreign invasions, and the deadly presence of ISIS.
Looking to investigate recruitment techniques of ISIS to lure women into Syria, a journalist creates a Facebook profile of a Muslim convert. When an ISIS recruiter contacts her online character, she experiences the process first hand.
Since 2013 more than 30,000 fighters from all over the world have joined the troops of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (Daesh) in Syria. Fighting against them as part of the YPO (Popular Protection Command) in Rojava—in the north of Syria and prevalently Kurdish—are some hundreds of Westerners. This is the story of three of them: a former American marine, an Italian anti capitalist activist, and a Swedish bodyguard.
After two marines make it home following an ISIS interrogation, one struggles to survive while the other fights his way back into the mixed martial arts world that he left behind years ago.
A disturbing portrait of four Western volunteers who risk their lives to fight ISIS alongside Kurdish forces. The feature documentary 'My War' probes the complex motives behind the need to take up arms on someone else’s behalf.
German journalist Jürgen Todenhöfer uses this unique opportunity to expose ISIS' apocalyptic vision for the world and to document everyday life in the cities it controls. He finds a population terrified into submission by beheadings, enslavement and torture, and an organisation unwavering in its commitment to its divine mission: to spread fear and violence throughout the world, no matter the cost.
Civilians, journalists and soldiers from both sides of the conflict explain their experience during the Iraq War, from the 2003 invasion through the 17 years that followed. Edited version from "Once Upon a Time in Iraq" (2020)
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.
After the impressive Gulistan, Land of Roses (VdR 2016), the Kurdish filmmaker Zaynê Akyol returns with these conversations with imprisoned members of the Islamic State, alternating their words with aerial views of the countryside. An unexpected look at a far-reaching current political issue and a film whose subject matter and rhythm create an impressive cinematic object.
As the forces of ISIS and Assad tear through villages and society in Syria and Northern Iraq, a group of brave and idealistic women are taking up arms against them—and winning inspiring victories. Members of “The Free Women’s Party” come from Paris, Turkish Kurdistan, and other parts of the world. Their dream: To create a Democratic Syria, and a society based on gender equality. Guns in hand, these women are carrying on a movement with roots that run 40 years deep in the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey. GIRL’S WAR honors the legacy of Sakine Cansiz, co-founder of the PKK who was assassinated in Paris in 2013, and reflects on the sacrifices made by all of the women in the movement, who have endured jail, rape, war, and persecution in their quest to liberate their lives and sisters from male dominance. With scenes of solidarity, strength, and love amongst these brave women soldiers, GIRL'S WAR is a surprising story of Middle Eastern feminism on the front lines.
A look back over nine years of the Syrian Civil War, an inextricable conflict, like a black box, due to the competing interests of the many factions in presence and those of the foreign powers.
A group of Malayali nurses stranded in Iraq, must survive their capture by the extremists and reach out to the rescue team headed by the Indian government.