Patron was on the road with the Rojava Film Commune to screen their latest film ‘The End Will Be Spectacular’ for their home audience. “When we need a tank, we get one”, said Sêvînaz Evdike. It has to sink in before the coin drops that it’s actually about an army tank, which is provided by […]
Details haven’t emerged yet about the plan of the Kurds in Northeast Syria to prosecute in local courts the foreign ISIS-fighters they are holding captive. Besides judicial questions, it raises political dilemmas. What are the Kurds really after? Trials, or recognition of their autonomy? Continue reading at Patreon!
Boycotts of Turkish products are ongoing in both the Kurdistan Region in Iraq and in the autonomously governed northeast of Syria. There are similarities: in both regions, the people started the boycott and many business people support it. But there are striking differences too. A report from Qamislo and Sulaymanya. Continue reading on Patreon!
‘The Act of Killing’ is by far the most overwhelming film I have ever seen. It was recommended to me by the lecturers in my International Journalism Master’s as an example of a documentary film in which the unexpected form, re-enactment, is exceptionally well chosen. It is, but the film hit me mostly because of […]
I made this short film (less than seven minutes!) about the reconstruction of Raqqa for my master International Journalism at Edinburg Napier University. I published it on my Patreon page – where you can support my work by becoming a Patron! Why don’t you? Watch the film here!
A plastic plate with pink flowers is floating in the small water basin underneath the trees on the northern bank of the Euphrates. On its rim small glasses of fresh tea are standing. Five broken plastic chairs around it. In one of the trees a yellow garden hose is wrapped around a branch. Tiny holes […]
RAQQA – The wall of white ‘cells’ is shining white. Abu Majid (header picture) pulls open doors of the small boxes behind which wires are hidden. The ‘cells’ are crucial parts of power plant number 4 in the city centre of Raqqa in the north of Syria. They arrived two weeks ago and he and […]
By propitiating the Kurds, Erdoğan could destine the new elections in Istanbul in his favour, some people think. It is assumed that this is why he ended the confinement in isolation of the Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan. But if that’s the case, why then did he simultaneously start an offensive against PKK fighters in the […]
SULAYMANYA – Murat Memiş, chair of the Socialist Party in the local council in the Dutch city of Eindhoven, was detained in the Turkish city of Antalya on 30 April in the presence of his wife and two young children. On 3 May he was released but Turkish authorities won’t allow him to leave the […]
SULAYMANYA – Murat Memiş, voorzitter van de SP-fractie in de gemeenteraad van Eindhoven, werd op 30 april in het bijzijn van zijn vrouw en twee jonge kinderen opgepakt in de Turkse badplaats Antalya. Inmiddels is hij weer vrij, maar hij mag van de Turkse autoriteiten het land niet verlaten. Memiş (31), een Koerdische Nederlander, wordt […]