Sertschawan

In March 1988, the media published a photograph that became a symbol : the man from Halabja, lying dead on the ground with his small child in his arms, became a symbol for death from toxic gas. Who was this father, nameless and lifeless ? How did all these refugees without a country and miserable, live before their flight ? What can one do with these photos of death and fleeing without any knowledge of the life hidden behind them ? The film has its periods of day and night. During the day, it passes through a village, accompanies the Iranian-Kurds crossing the mountains with a sheep… souvenirs evocative of the ancient period of Mam and Zin. At night, the Iraqi-Kurdish refugees are the village hosts. They recount the events that led to their exile : the destruction of their villages, the annihilation of their culture upto the use of poison gas that reached its culmination with Halabja”. (Hans Stürm, Béatrice Michel)