“Testimonies From Mount Sinjar” (دیدەڤان ژ چیایێ شنگارێ) (00:04:55) by Huner Emin, South Kurdistan (North Iraq), USA, ongoing

The work was available on our platform only for the period of the screening.

“Testimonies From Mount Sinjar” (دیدەڤان ژ چیایێ شنگارێ) (00:04:55) by Huner Emin, South Kurdistan (North Iraq), USA, ongoing

Short scripts adopted from ISIL crimes against humanity in Iraq and Syria.

“Testimonies from Mount Sinjar” is a multidisciplinary project focused on crimes against humanity committed by ISIS members in Iraq. Featuring a series of written film scripts of crucial, desperate, and traumatizing moments that survivors suffered under ISIS’s captivity. These extremely short scenes offer snapshots or fragments of the survivors’ stories.

The scenarios are adapted from survivors’ testimony documented by researcher Dawood Khatari, the Yazda Institute public reports, and survivor and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Nadia Murad’s book: The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State.

The survivors’ stories are full of personal accounts of crimes against humanity, and a minority group, committed by vicious and brutal ISIS members. Victims describe their captivity in excruciating detail, recalling escape and suicide attempts, repeated sexual assaults by multiple ISIS members, surviving mass shootings, and witnessing the killings and sexual or physical assaults of family members. 

It is challenging for survivors to express the cruelty of unimaginable tortures that they went through. What we know is a fraction of the whole picture, as these scenes will be, and just the tip of the iceberg of the unbearable pain victims endured and the harsh memories that they must live with for the rest of their lives.

Bio

Huner Emin is a stateless multimedia Kurdish artist. He grew up in south Kurdistan/northern Iraq and is now based in Bloomington, Indiana.