Claimed by both Iraq and Kurdistan, the town of Sinjar in northern Iraq was the site of an ISIL massacre of the Yazidi people in 2014 that lead to a devastating situation which human rights organizations call genocide. The town gives its name to the latest film from Spanish director Anna M. Bofarull who also wrote the narrative feature.took international rights earlier this year, and is releasing the film in Spain.
Eman was captured when she was 9-years-old and was immediately sold to an ISIS supporter and married to him. Her life completely changed after that. She was separated from her family, her childhood abruptly finished and she became an abused wife. She was later sold again and re-married, considered not more than an object. She managed to escape when she was 13-years-old, being a strong teenager ready to fight for a new life.
I wanted to explore how daily life can change with horrors that you cannot control. I wanted to bring Yazidi women’s life close to the screen and show to Western audiences that women living in the Middle East suffer as much as any others and are never prepared for that. And that, at the same time, foreign wars can also break into the reality of European women . I wanted to explore how women in these situations need to adapt, how they need to survive.