The 16th Kurdish Film Festival Berlin turns its focus in 2026 to a rarely told chapter of European history: the lives and cultural production of Kurds in the former Soviet Union. Under the title “Between Memory, Identity, Deportation, and Renewal,” the festival explores a complex historical experience that continues to resonate within Kurdish collective memory.
For several decades, Kurdish language, education, press, radio, and artistic expression were possible within the Soviet system—at a time when Kurdish culture was suppressed in many regions of the Middle East. Yet these opportunities were inseparable from political control, ideological boundaries, and, eventually, from repression, deportation, and the erasure of cultural structures.
Through films, exhibitions, sound and spatial installations, and literary events, the festival brings together artistic and historical perspectives on memory, migration, language, and cultural self-assertion. The program reflects on how identity is shaped under political systems that simultaneously enable and restrict belonging.
Program highlights include the sound installation “Radioya Yerevane – The Voice of Memory,” exhibitions on the Kurdish press history of Armenia and the autonomy project “Red Kurdistan (1923–1929),” an immersive installation dedicated to Yezidi artist Nazi Alexandrovna Shirai, and a literary reading with Kurdish writer Eskerê Boyîk.
The 16th Kurdish Film Festival Berlin offers a space for remembrance and artistic dialogue—bridging archives and the present, Berlin and the diverse geographies of Kurdish history.