The Dark Wind

The Dark Wind, the Iraqi candidate for the upcoming Academy Awards, is a dearing drama. Based on a true story, it tells of a Yesidi woman who is kidnapped by ISIS and sold as a sex slave. In the film she is rescued by her husband-to-be, and brought back to the refugee camp where her family lives.

The Yesidis are a Kurdish-speaking group living in Northern parts of Iraq. Of a total population of 650 000, 400 000 now live in refugee camps. The Dark Wind follows Pero, a woman who has had the dreadful experience of being kidnapped and sold at a sex market in Iraq, and later raped and tortured. Utterly traumatised by what she has gone through, she has a hard time re-adapting to her old life and the marriage that has been planned for her after she is rescued. Director Hussein Hassan Ali also focuses on how the family fails to properly recognize Pero's experience, which does not make things easier for her.

Diman Zandi delivers a very strong performance as Pero, and the intensity of her suffering is one of the film's strongest assets. Lasse Skagen

Hussein Hassan Ali (b. 1974) is a Kurdish director and actor from Iraq. He has worked with children's television and directed a number of shorts and music videos before his first feature, Narcissus Blossom, which screened at the Berlinale in 2006. The Dark Wind won the main award at the Dubai film festival in 2016.