The Kurdish Film Festival Berlin will take place from 12 to 19 October and will present a multi-layered festival program all about Kurdish cinema for the 12th time.

The program combines traditional and contemporary filmmaking from a Kurdish perspective and about Kurdish realities. The film production company mîtosfilm has been organizing the festival since 2002, showing feature films, documentaries and short films from the region. In addition to artistic aspects, cultural and political aspects also play an important role in the selection of films.

The documentary "A Bridge to Rojava" by Kurdish filmmaker Ekrem Heydo will premiere at the festival. The film by the director, who was born in Serêkaniyê in the western part of Kurdistan in 1973, deals with the emergence and development of the town twinning association Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg - Dêrik and its projects. It also shows the everyday life of the people in Northern and Eastern Syria and the ever-present threat from the Turkish army and its Islamist auxiliaries.

"A bridge to Rojava" accompanies Elke Dangeleit and H. Günter Kleff, co-founders of the town twinning association, in 2018, on a trip to Rojava. In order to prepare the signing of Germany's first city twinning with a north-east Syrian city for the multicultural Berlin district of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, they meet the mayors of the city of Dêrik, Feremez Hammo and Rojin Çeto. Based on the work of the town twinning association and the trip of the Berlin delegation to Syria, the film paints a picture of the situation in Northern and Eastern Syria and clearly shows the current challenges of the local people.