The festival started with the participation of 18 local groups, nine groups from different countries, and two groups that came as special guests.
Hassan Hantoush and his friend came from the capital of Iraq, Baghdad, and performed several extraordinary plays that exhibited the aftermath of the Iraqi youths who migrated illegally outside their country.
“Today, we performed ‘Paranoia’, a piece that tells about the [Iraqi] migrant youth who had a goal and wanted to migrate through all means to chase their dreams, but unfortunately many Iraqi youth faced death by not letting them pass the borders, so either they drowned or died because of the freezing weather,” Hassan Hantoush, an Iraqi actor, told Rudaw’s Hunar Hamid on Tuesday.
“The message behind our play was solely about how migrating can be a cause to lose your life,” he added.
Several Kurdish actors and actresses from Sulaimani's Chamchamal district performed a piece that illustrated the misery of the Anfal campaign that killed more than 182,000 Kurds in two years by then-president Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime.
“We are from the Chamchamal Fine Arts Association, I played the role of an Anfal victim girl and the suffering of the Anfal victims' families in this play,” Shanga Kirkuki, an actress, told Rudaw.
Carline Fleo travelled from Spain to Darbandikhan for the first time and she was impressed by the presence of theater audiences in the town.
“This is my first time here in Iraq and the experience is amazing, and I am so happy to be in this festival,” Fleo told Rudaw.
Five judges evaluated the best actors, actresses, and directors based on their theatrical performances.
