It should come as no surprise that this year’s Dahuk International Film Festival (DIFF) looks at women’s representation and contributions to Kurdish cinema, given that 2018 is a year of Kurdish women’s experiences being foregrounded on and off screen. The film “Girls of the Sun,” which competed for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, follows a battle-hardened Kurdish military unit in northern Syria comprised exclusively of women once held captive by the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS). Yazidi activist Nadia Murad received the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war. Her tale of persistence in the face of deep trauma is told through a new documentary released this month p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Arial; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} (but not featured at the festival), “On Her Shoulders,” by Alexandria Bombach.

Bina Qeredaxi, a co-founder and former program manager of the festival, has witnessed the increased participation of women in Kurdish film and in the festival itself over the past few years. “We wanted to promote this topic to both support women currently in the field and also encourage women on the sidelines to jump in,” she told Al-Monitor.

The fact that there is an international film festival at all in Dahuk is impressive. Dahuk, nestled in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, is a semi-autonomous region that has been roiled by a seemingly endless succession of crises and conflict, including humanitarian and psychological impacts caused by IS; financial crisis; a failed independence referendum last September; ongoing territorial disputes with Baghdad; and increased attacks on its soil from Turkey and Iran.

Nonetheless, DIFF, whose sixth edition runs Oct. 20-27, has endured and is, in fact, growing. According to award-winning filmmaker Shawkat Amin Korki, who is the artistic director for this year’s festival, “It has become the largest event of its type dedicated to Kurdish film.”