The 13th Hamburg Kurdish Film Festival will open today and will end on 31 October in the 3001 cinema and the Zeise cinemas. This year, the festival will open with the slogan "Jin, Jiyan, Azadi" in solidarity with the women and people of Rojhilat and Iran who have been protesting for over a month.

The festival will open at 6.30 pm with a gala and a live performance by the Kurdish musician Hivron in the Zeise cinemas on Friedensallee in Altona. This will be followed by the presentation of this year's opening film "Neighbors" by Mano Khalil.

This year, the organizers of the Hamburg Kurdish Film Festival promise a rich offer of very different Kurdish feature films, short films and documentaries. Out of solidarity with filmmakers in Afghanistan and Ukraine, two films from these countries will also be shown. The award ceremony will take place on 31 October at 4 pm in the Zeise cinemas. The closing film will be Florian Hoffmann's “Stille Post”.

Panel and children's program

The festival program also includes a panel. On 30 October, the archaeologist and film producer Mesut Alp and the filmmaker Veysi Altay will discuss "humanity, culture and human rights in the shadow of state reprisals - the effect of systematic mistreatment on Kurdish cinema" in the MUT Theater.