"The Dark Wind," a film directed by Hussein Hassan, sparked a large-scale objection among Yazidis at this year's Duhok International Film Festival.

The film was screened the first day of the festival, held Sept. 9-16 in Dahuk, Iraqi Kurdistan, despite protesters' claims that the film presents a bad image and twists facts about Yazidi women who were captured by the Islamic State (IS) and escaped its grip.

Murad Ismael, the executive director for the Houston-based nonprofit Yazda, told Al-Monitor, “The [one] scene alone — where a Yazidi father tells his survivor daughter that she does not befit them, and puts her at gunpoint — is enough [for us] to perceive [the film] as offending to Yazidis.”

The Yazidi community had previously objected to the film and demanded that changes be made. Yet, the director did not respond to their call, Qader Hassan, a Yazidi activist, told Al-Monitor. He said the Yazidi Lalish Dahuk cultural center asked permission to watch the entire film before the festival, following which "we expressed reservations to the director [who attended the cultural center showing] and asked him to delete offensive scenes. He did not delete them, although he promised to do so.”