LONDON – More than 300 people gathered at London’s British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) this week for the UK premiere of “1001 Apples,” a film about Saddam Hussein’s Anfal genocide that targeted mainly the Kurds.
Sunday’s screening was followed by a panel discussion about the role of genocide in Kurdish cinema. The award-winning film, part of the London Kurdish Film Festival, is one of several produced about the Anfal, which the UK parliament last year officially recognized as genocide.
This year marks the 26th anniversary of the Anfal, and with it has come a handful of new films illustrating the tragic mark in Kurdish history, remembered for the estimated 182,000 Kurds killed and thousands of their villages destroyed.
Jano Rosebiani’s film, “Chaplin of the Mountains,” debuted in New York earlier this year. In the film, which took four years to make, the director brings to light the taboo topic of young Kurdish women being sold by Saddam’s regime during Anfal. The film also explores the impact of the genocide, through the lens of villages that have been destroyed, and chemical warfare victims.
Taha Karimi -- who was born in Iranian Kurdistan and killed last year in a car accident -- has garnered critical acclaim for “1001 Apples,” a true story of 10 Kurds who amazingly escape alive from an Anfal mass grave.
One of the survivors, Faraj, was taken to the United States by Human Rights Watch. He later founded the Iraqi Mass Graves Survivor Group. Faraj, along with four other survivors, eventually returned to Kurdistan. They brought with them 1001 apples studded with cloves. The group visited families of Anfal victims, handing out the fruit as symbols of peace and reconciliation.
PhD candidate and lecturer Fazil Moradi, who was among the panellists, said the apples are the most significant aspect of the film.
“The apple and the cloves are acts of forgiveness and signs of forgiveness and travelling of ideas from ancient Iran, where apples and cloves were used even between lovers as signs of forgiveness and reconciliation. It’s also practiced today, also with oranges. Foods and fruits are seen as a sign of health and well-being.”
A number of non-Kurds viewed the film, the apples finding resonance across cultures. Mahalia Walker found it to be a strong symbol.
“The apples, for me, represented so many things: Hope, retribution, justice, but most of all a sense of community coming together through trauma.”
That sense of coming together, says Moradi, is exactly the point of the film.
The film asks the viewers and the survivors and the perpetrators of acts of genocide to consider this idea of reconciliation and forgiveness as a future, something we all need to work towards. 
“The film asks the viewers and the survivors and the perpetrators of acts of genocide to consider this idea of reconciliation and forgiveness as a future, something we all need to work towards. The message is, we should work together to change the future.”
Filmmaker Dilshad Mustafa also spoke on the panel. Mustafa and Moradi agree that genocide-themed Kurdish films must inform, and establish a common consciousness of the historical event.
“In Israel, people know what the Holocaust is, but with the Kurdish genocide, after 14 years, filmmakers and academics have tried to create a collective memory. Most people know what the Holocaust is, but most people don’t know what Anfal is.”
That collective memory, which filmmakers like Karimi inspire, isn’t limited to the Kurdish community.
“I thought the film was amazing,” said Walker. “I loved the way the people made a conscientious effort to deal with the pain by sticking cloves into apples. They needed no glory; for the right of self-determination and coping strategies were those the Kurdish people had used many times before in conciliation situations.“
Better than music, art, literature, or other media, Walker believes film tells a story best.
“It’s great for exploring topics like genocide... sometimes film is an observation and other times it leaves the audience to view the issues subjectively, rather than just from the narrator’s point of view."
Mustafa said that, while cinema has become central to the mediation of modern cultural life, helping people see an event from different perspectives, with different meanings, Kurdish filmmakers must constantly strive to improve their storytelling.
“We need to ask ourselves about the function of film in our society and the language we use to tell these stories. In what ways can we take the artists’ understanding of the event to a new level?”
For Walker, Kurdish film answers those questions succinctly.
“I like the way the stories discuss human rights issues through either docu-stories or caricature films... the films, props, actors, costumes, setting and the way it was cross-referenced with typesetting were magical for me.”
