Together with over twenty other major film festivals, the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) is curating We Are One: A Global Film Festival. Each festival contributes its share of films to this freely accessible YouTube event to raise money for Covid-19 relief funds.

IFFR presents four films, from short to feature-length, made by four different film collectives. 

Among the films to be presented is Stories of Destroyed Cities: Şhengal by Şêro Hindê. The film has not shown at IFFR before and was made by the Rojava Film Commune, the Rojava film collective which held the Freedom Lecture at De Balie during IFFR 2020, this year, when the film Jibo Azadiye (The end will be spectacular) was shown.

IFFR has chosen to support the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), a global organisation determined to save the lives of refugees. UNHCR advocates the inclusion of refugees in emergency social protection schemes and helps the most vulnerable with one-off cash assistance.

After premiering, each film will remain online for seven days.

Freedom Lecture by Rojava Film Commune

After the screening of  Stories of Destroyed Cities: Şhengal, a lecture given during the Rotterdam Festival by Diyar Hesso and Sêvînaz Evdikê of the Kurdish Rojava Film Commune will be broadcast on You Tube.

This film collective emerged in Rojava in Northern Syria and stimulated a new generation of image-makers to make films based on their everyday reality.

Rojava Film Commune is a non-hierarchical collective that stimulates film education and film production among the local population. In this way, film becomes a medium for depicting the experiences of Kurdish civilians.

Watch on YouTube Premiere: 2 June 2020, 16:30 hours (Holland time)