Kurdish Cinema: From Yılmaz Güney to Today

At a Glance

Yılmaz Güney (1937-1984) was born in Adana, in southern Turkey, the child of a Kurdish family who had come down to the cotton plain as laborers; his father's side was from Siverek, his mother's from Varto, both in the Kurdish region.
Yeşilçam, Turkey's answer to Hollywood, made him "the Ugly King." He acted in around a hundred films, then moved behind the camera.
Umut (Hope, 1970) is a break point in Turkish cinema; the censors banned it.
He wrote the screenplays for Sürü (The Herd) and Düşman (The Enemy) in prison. He directed Yol (The Road) from his cell; Şerif Gören shot the set.
Yol shared the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1982 with Costa-Gavras's Missing. It stayed banned in Turkey until 1999.
He shot his last film, Duvar (The Wall, 1983), in France. He died in Paris on 9 September 1984; his grave is in Père Lachaise.
The pioneer of the next generation came from the Iranian side. Bahman Ghobadi's A Time for Drunken Horses won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes in 2000; it counts as the first Kurdish-language feature shot in Iran.
Turtles Can Fly (2004) won San Sebastián's grand prize, the Golden Shell.
The Iraqi Kurd Hiner Saleem worked from Paris: Kilomètre Zéro (2005) became the first Iraqi film in the Cannes main competition.
"Which is the first Kurdish film?" is a disputed question: the silent Zare (1926/27, Soviet Armenia), which portrays Kurds, and the first Kurdish-language feature, Klamek ji bo Beko (1992), are separate answers. Since 2012 the Duhok International Film Festival has carried this inheritance.

May 1982, Cannes. A film ends in the festival palace, and the hall rises to its feet. The applause runs for minutes. The man on the stage had, a year earlier, been answering the roll call in a prison in Turkey. He had directed his film without ever setting foot on the set: from his cell, instruction by instruction, page by page.

That evening Yol shared the Palme d'Or with Costa-Gavras's Missing. The director's name was Yılmaz Güney. He was the child of Kurdish cotton workers, born at the edge of a field in Adana.

Wherever you choose to begin the history of Kurdish cinema, the road turns and returns to him. So let us begin there, but before we finish, let us look honestly at what came before him and after. The Kurds are one of the largest stateless peoples in the Middle East, and their cinema, like their language, was for a long time a thing spoken in a low voice.

A Childhood in Adana: Cotton, Simit, Film Reels

Yılmaz Güney was born in 1937 in the village of Yenice, near Adana. His family was landless; they had come down to the Çukurova, the cotton plain of southern Turkey, as laborers. His father's side was from Siverek, his mother's from Varto, both towns in the Kurdish region. The home's language and memory were Kurdish; the street's language was Turkish. That double life was the ruler he measured everything against.

The boy Yılmaz sold water, sold simit (the ring-shaped sesame bread of the streets), picked cotton. His meeting with cinema also came through labor: he ran errands for the film companies in Adana and carried the reels. He learned early the distance between the world on the screen and the sack on his back. He began to write, and his stories appeared in the magazines. In 1961 he was tried over one of those stories and jailed. He was barely into his twenties, and his first acquaintance with the state had come through literature.

He went to Istanbul. Extra work on the set, screenplay repair, small roles, and the camera found him. But how would this poor, dark, hard-faced youth make room for himself in the world of leading men?

The Ugly King: A Face in the People's Mirror

The answer hides in the most famous nickname in Turkish film history. What did the young actor say? The Cambridge History of the Kurds records the scene through Bahar Şimşek: in 1965 the young actor talks with a journalist about the film Krallar Kralı (King of Kings). His self-assured tone unsettles the journalist, who reminds him that the one king of Turkish cinema is Ayhan Işık. Güney answers with a nickname, and takes the name "Ugly King" for himself.

The nickname held, because it was true. Güney was the opposite of the handsome-lead mold, and his audience saw itself in him for exactly that reason. The men he played were outlaws, prisoners, the angry poor. In the cinema halls, workers and villagers saw their own faces up close for the first time. He acted in around a hundred films; he was the surest name at the box office.

But here is the fine point the Cambridge history draws out. The world of these films was often the Kurdish country, and its language was Turkish. Kurdish was banned on screen in those years. Kurdishness could be heard only in names: Seyyit Han, Koçero, Remo, Keje. This is how the cinema of the ban age speaks: in a whisper, in names.

Umut (1970): The Camera Comes Down to Earth

In 1968, with Seyyit Han, he crossed over to directing. The real break came in 1970: Umut (Hope).

Umut is the story of Cabbar, a cab-driver in Adana: his horse dies, and his hope binds itself to a treasure-tale. The film was slow, dry, and real; the star Yılmaz Güney was knowingly putting out his own star image. The censorship board banned the film. A copy is said to have been smuggled abroad, and the film was shown and discussed in Europe. Today most critics count Umut among the turning points of Turkish cinema.

What had it changed? It had brought the camera down to earth. Poverty was no longer scenery; it was the subject. And here too stands the limit Şimşek points to: the films of this period tell Kurdish poverty as a matter of class; they cannot speak the Kurdish name. When the word is banned, the image speaks, but the image has its limit too.

The Film Directed from a Cell: Yol

After 1972 Güney's life passed between the courtroom and the prison. In 1974, in a night quarrel in Yumurtalık, the judge Sefa Mutlu was killed; the court found Güney guilty and gave him nineteen years. The case has been argued ever since. For Güney one thing was certain: at the peak of his directing life, he had been torn from his camera.

Was he really cut off? No; he changed method. In his cell he wrote screenplays and had the films shot by proxy. He built Sürü (The Herd, 1978) and Düşman (The Enemy, 1979) as their writer, and Zeki Ökten directed the set. Then came Yol (The Road): five prisoners scattering to their home regions on a week's leave. Şerif Gören shot the set; Güney described every scene on paper. In the autumn of 1981 he did not return to the semi-open prison he had left on leave, and he went abroad. He edited the film in Switzerland.

In May 1982 Yol shared the Palme d'Or at Cannes with Missing. Much of the country the film shows was the Kurdish country, and in the international print, as the prisoner Ömer returns to his village near the border, the word "Kurdistan" comes onto the screen; in those years the word itself was banned in Turkey. The film too was banned, and it could not reach Turkish screens until 1999. The Cambridge history adds one more detail: Yol was banned in Iraq as well for years. One film had come as too much for two states at once.

Duvar and Père Lachaise

In exile he could make only one film: Duvar (The Wall, 1983). Shot in France with state support, it tells of the children's ward of a prison, and its harshness still shakes the viewer today. Turkey stripped him of his citizenship. His sick body was giving its last signals.

Yılmaz Güney died in Paris of stomach cancer on 9 September 1984. He was forty-seven. He was buried in Père Lachaise cemetery, and his grave still receives visitors. What did he leave behind? Two inheritances. A whole filmography shot in Turkish, and a possibility called Kurdish cinema that, on that day, did not yet even have a name. Şimşek's judgment is clear: for many, he is the pioneer of Kurdish cinema, but this pioneering is the pioneering of a people whose language was banned, and for exactly that reason the story does not end with him.

A Voice from Iran: Bahman Ghobadi

The next great link came from the other side of the border. Bahman Ghobadi was born in 1969 in the city of Baneh, in eastern Kurdistan, on the Iranian side. He grew up inside Iranian cinema, and he shot his first feature in his own country, in his own language: A Time for Drunken Horses (2000). The film tells of orphaned children smuggling with mules across the Iran-Iraq border, and its actors are the real children of those mountains.

The result went into the record. In 2000 the film won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes, given to the best first film, and it counted as the first Kurdish-language feature shot in Iran. Kurdish, an Iranic language, had entered the main stage of world cinema with a prize. Ghobadi did not stop. Turtles Can Fly (2004) became one of the first features shot in post-Saddam Iraq; it tells of children who clear landmines, and it won San Sebastián's grand prize, the Golden Shell, and took an award in Berlin too. In an interview the Cambridge history reports, Ghobadi describes himself in a single sentence: his whole being is Iranian, his heart is Kurdish.

What separated Ghobadi from Güney? Güney had to tell the Kurdish story in Turkish; Ghobadi could shoot in his mother tongue. The distance between them is not two generations but two regimes' history of censorship.

From Paris to Duhok: Saleem, Ustaoğlu, and the Diaspora

In the same years a third voice rose from Paris. Hiner Saleem was born in 1964 in Akrê, in the Behdinan region of Iraqi Kurdistan, and he left Iraq at seventeen. The title of the book about his childhood reads like a summary: My Father's Rifle. Vodka Lemon (2003), set in a Kurdish village in Armenia, took a prize at Venice. Kilomètre Zéro (2005) became the first Iraqi film to enter the Cannes main competition. My Sweet Pepperland (2013) was shown in Cannes's Un Certain Regard section, and, as Şimşek notes, the film lets the different branches of Kurdish speak within one story.

But is this story only the Kurdish directors'? No. Yeşim Ustaoğlu's Journey to the Sun (Güneşe Yolculuk, 1999) is among the strongest films to take up the Kurdish question: it tells the friendship of a Turkish youth and a Kurdish youth who meet in Istanbul, and the eastward journey of a coffin. The film won the Blue Angel award and the Peace Film Award at the Berlin festival, and it was chosen the year's best film in Istanbul. A banned subject sometimes reaches the screen through the neighbor's window.

Let us record the diaspora's share too. The musician Nizamettin Ariç, living in Germany, made Klamek ji bo Beko (A Song for Beko, 1992), counted as the first feature shot in Kurdish, and it carries onto the screen the pain of the days of the 1988 chemical attack. Exile, in Kurdish cinema, is not a theme; it is most often the very condition of production.

Which Is the "First Kurdish Film"? And Today

Now the thorniest question: which is the first Kurdish film? The honest answer splits the question in two.

For the first film that portrays Kurds, the record points to Soviet Armenia: Zare. It is a silent love film, set in a Yazidi Kurdish village. The Cambridge history gives the year as 1927, many sources say 1926, and the director is Hamo Beknazaryan. That Soviet Armenian cultural basin we described in our article on Radio Yerevan was also the first cradle of Kurdish cinema. But Zare is silent, and its maker is not Kurdish, so whether to call it "the first Kurdish film" depends on the definition. The strongest answer to the question of the first Kurdish-language feature is the Klamek ji bo Beko named above (1992). Between the two dates lie 65 years, and that gap is the ban-history of four states.

The numbers tell this history on their own. By the Cambridge history's count, the number of feature films shot in the Kurdish languages from Yol in 1982 to the end of the 2010s is only 58. Of these, 21 were shot between 2009 and 2018 with the support of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. When an official structure comes into play, in other words, production multiplies. That structure has its showcase too: the Duhok International Film Festival, held since 2012 in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Duhok, brings together the films of the four parts of Kurdistan (divided among Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria) and the diaspora in one hall.

The title of the first anthology on Kurdish cinema in Turkish reads like the shortest summary of this article: Yurtsuzluk, Sınır ve Ölüm (Statelessness, Border, and Death). But today the screen shows more than those three words. The names Güney said in a whisper are written openly on the posters now. The road was long; it was not traveled in vain.

Frequently Asked Questions

Was Yılmaz Güney Kurdish? His family were Kurds with roots in Siverek and Varto, and in his years of exile Güney claimed his Kurdish identity openly. That his films are in Turkish comes from the ban of the era: Kurdish could not be spoken on screen.

What award did Yol win, and why was it banned? Yol shared the Palme d'Or at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival with Costa-Gavras's Missing. Showing the Kurdish country and carrying the word "Kurdistan" in its international print, the film stayed banned in Turkey until 1999.

Which is the first Kurdish film? It is disputed. The first film that portrays Kurds is the silent Zare, shot in Soviet Armenia (1926 or 1927, depending on the source). The first feature shot in Kurdish is usually taken to be Nizamettin Ariç's Klamek ji bo Beko (1992).

What awards did Bahman Ghobadi win? A Time for Drunken Horses won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes in 2000. Turtles Can Fly won the Golden Shell at San Sebastián in 2004, and in 2005 took the Peace Film Award and the Crystal Bear in Berlin.

What is the Duhok Film Festival? An international festival held since 2012 in the city of Duhok, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq; it is the main showcase where Kurdish films from the four parts and the diaspora meet.

Sources and Further Reading

Primary sources (from the Bedel Boseli Collection):

Hamit Bozarslan and others (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Kurds (2021); Bahar Şimşek's chapter "A Cinematography of Kurdishness" and the chapter on Kurdish cultural life in Soviet Armenia (the Zare record, the ban on Yol, Duhok, and the production figures).
Dr. Mehrdad R. Izady, The Kurds: A Concise Handbook (4th ed.); the "Theater & Motion Pictures" chapter and the assessment of Yol.

Social Media Summaries

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May 1982, Cannes: the Palme d'Or went to a man who directed from his cell. Şerif Gören shot Yol on the set; Yılmaz Güney directed it on paper. The film stayed banned in Turkey for 17 years: bedelboseli.com/en/kurdish-cinema-from-yilmaz-guney
Yeşilçam called him "the Ugly King"; he chose the nickname himself. Son of a Kurdish cotton-worker family in Adana, he acted in around a hundred films, then turned the camera onto the faces of the poor: bedelboseli.com/en/kurdish-cinema-from-yilmaz-guney
Kurdish was banned in Güney's films; Kurdishness was heard only in names: Seyyit Han, Koçero, Keje. In 2000 Ghobadi's A Time for Drunken Horses came home from Cannes with a prize; this time the language itself was speaking: bedelboseli.com/en/kurdish-cinema-from-yilmaz-guney
Which is the first Kurdish film? The honest answer is double: the silent Zare (1926/27, Soviet Armenia), and the first Kurdish-language feature, Klamek ji bo Beko (1992). The 65 years between them are the ban-history of four states: bedelboseli.com/en/kurdish-cinema-from-yilmaz-guney
From 1982 to the end of the 2010s, only 58 features were shot in the Kurdish languages. Of those, 21 came between 2009 and 2018 with support from the Kurdistan Region. The Duhok festival has been the showcase since 2012: bedelboseli.com/en/kurdish-cinema-from-yilmaz-guney