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Kurdish director Shawkat Amin Korki scoops film awards in
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Kurdish director scoops film awards in
Singapore 1.5.2007 |
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May 1, 2007
SINGAPORE - A movie set against the backdrop
of the 2003 US-led liberation of Iraq scooped two
awards for Kurdish film maker Shawkat Amin Korki at
the Singapore International Film Festival.
‘Crossing The Dust’ (Parinawa La Gohobar) beat nine
other nominees for the best director award in the
Asian feature film category at the festival, which
ended Monday.
It also received the Network for the Promotion of
Asian Cinema Jury Award.
‘I am dedicating these prizes to the Kurdish people.
I hope that no one will be killed in Kurdistan or
Iraq and there will be no more war in the world,’
said the 35-year-old Shawkat, who also wrote the
screenplay for his debut feature film.
Among the other nominees was Indonesian director
Garin Nugroho, who entered a documentary about
survivors of the 2004 tsunami in Aceh province.
In an interview with AFP on Saturday, a day after
receiving the awards, the easy-going Shawkat
described the 74-minute movie as an anti-war film.
The plot revolves around two soldiers from Iraq’s
northern autonomous region of Kurdistan, Azad and
Rashid, who come across a lost five-year-old Iraqi
boy named Saddam crying at the side of a road, on
the day his namesake, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein,
was deposed.
Azad overcomes ethnic differences and tries to help
the boy find his parents, much to the objections of
Rashid, whose family was wiped out by Iraqi troops
under Saddam during the anti-Kurdish campaign in the
1980s.
Azad is killed while trying to protect the boy from
Saddam’s troops, who want to take him back.
Rashid puts aside his animosity and carries on with
the task of helping the boy find his parents.
Shawkat said the film was based on true stories.
Saddam Hussein was deposed by the US-led military
coalition, captured, and hanged on December 30 last
year.
US forces are now bogged down in Iraq, facing a
tenacious insurgency and the country is wracked by a
bloody cycle of violence.
‘The movie is against war and (made) to condemn the
feelings of hatred people have against others. It is
to celebrate the humane side and love people have
for one another,’ Shawkat said
through an interpreter.
The film is interspersed with footage of civilians
looting a government office in Baghdad, US troops
and tanks, and people cheering Saddam’s downfall.
Filming was carried out on location in Kurdistan and
Iraqi cities such as Mosul between mid-2004 and late
2006. The film was 70 percent funded by Kurdistan’s
ministry of culture.
‘Of course there were some risks.... There were some
bombings, and war was still going on in some areas
(during the filming),’ said Shawkat, who previously
made television documentaries and short films.
‘Crossing the Dust’ also touched on the bloody
history of the Iraqi Kurds.
Rashid has flashbacks of his family being killed in
a bombing by Saddam’s forces.
In another scene, women weep and mourn around mass
graves.
Shawkat’s own family was forced to flee to Iran in
1973 when he was two. He returned in 1999 and now
runs a film production company in Kurdistan.
But Shawkat says the film goes beyond just ‘crossing
the dust’ to bridge ties between Kurds and Iraqis.
‘The message of the movie is much bigger.... It is
about human beings. Regardless of anything that
happened in the past, we can live in peace,’ he
said.
‘Crossing the Dust’ has also been screened at six
other film festivals including the Rotterdam film
festival and the Cairo film festival.
Shawkat said he will submit it to Spain’s Granada
film festival in June, and is currently working on
the script for his next movie, a black comedy set in
a Kurdistan village.
AFP
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