Çiyayên Dur (Distant Mountains)

Çiyayên Dur is a film shot in 8mm during my stay in Iraqi Kurdistan, as part of the Moving Artists residency program. The film is structured around the idea of ​​the anti-landscape that impedes its development in the film Koba (2023). These are landscapes that dislocate conventional experience with our surroundings and open up the possibility of understanding our relationship with nature.

Guided by the voice narrating a woman’s journey through the Kurdish mountains, the images of Çiyayên Dur delve into the poetry of the inherent problems of the Kurdish territory, a consequence of a warlike past and a turbulent present. The materiality of the Super 8 camera and the beauty of these beautiful landscapes emerge in a dreamlike odyssey that slowly reveals the dark burden underlying these bucolic landscapes.