The festival will run from October 1-7, according to a statement released Friday by organizers on social media.
According to organizers, 150 movies from 50 different countries including Germany, France, Iran, Lebanon, Turkey, and Iraq were picked by a selection committee from 5,000 submissions.
Feature-length films, animation, documentaries, short films and other movie genres produced in the years 2018 and 2019 will be showcased in the International and National categories.
Awards will be presented in 14 different categories, and a number of workshops will be held. Venues will include Sulaimani’s City Cinema, Salim Cinema, Amna Suraka Hall, and Art Building.
The theme of this year’s festival is “Earth Cancer,” focusing on works geared towards co-existence, the environment and global matters, festival program head Lina Raza explained at a press conference on Friday.
Mala Bakhtiyar, a prominent Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) official, regular patron of cultural activities in Sulaimani and president of the festival, said he was proud the event was reaching its fourth run.
“In the first iteration, I said I would be a companion up to the sixth iteration of the festival. When I uttered that sentence, some people found the idea impossible,” Bakhtiyar said at the Friday press conference.
Bakhtiyar added that encouraging the production of new Kurdish cinema was the main motive for the festival.
Three years of experience hosting the festival is set to make this year’s run its most successful, organizers said at the press conference.
With the festival working as a means of showcasing Kurdish arts and culture, Raza said the event would “present our ethnic identity” to the world.
Though Kurdish cinema suffers a chronic lack of funding and infrastructure, this year’s festival will take place in an atmosphere of optimism after the box office success of domestic release Paykari Dil.
According to its media team, the festival will open with a screening of Sisters in Arms, a film about women from across the world fighting Islamic State (ISIS) alongside Kurdish female fighters. Organizers say this is the first time the film, directed by Caroline Fourest, will be shown at a festival in the Middle East.
