A Kurdish rights struggle by a Swiss national. Although strange, but a true story of Mano Khalil, an acclaimed filmmaker from Kurdistan, who is fighting for the cause of his people through the silver screen from a distance of over three thousand kilometres.

A dedicated section on identity struggle mainly of the Kurds, is one of the newest features of the 12-day event. Mano Khalil’s movie The Swallow highlights the ethnic struggles of Kurds in Iran. The Swallow narrates the plight of a 27-year-old woman who embarks on a journey from Switzerland to the Kurdistan region of Iraq searching for her father she has never met.

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During her journey, which is very tough, she encounters terrorism and violence. The journey of Mano Khalil, a Syrian Kurdish, started when he decided to discontinue his career in history and law that he was pursuing at Damascus University.

As a youth, he would often get opportunities to watch films in Syria, his homeland that was in its ‘good days’ during then. Later, the conflict in Syria broke out and people of his community were destroyed. But the films that he had watched as a young boy often inspired him, provoking his thoughts for the rights of his people.

He made films like Neighbours and a documentary named David der Tohildan based on struggles of fellow community members. “We are peace-loving people and what we want from other communities is respect that we do not get by the occupiers of our homeland.

Through my films like Neighbours,I want to convey the message that humanity is the most important thing and it is possible to live peacefully with people of different ethnicities,” claimed the director of The Beekeeper. Living in one of the most beautiful places, Switzerland, with around 20,000 other fellow Kurds, he wishes to serve as a bridge between Switzerland and Kurdistan.

The director wishes to make a film in Bengal on the different kinds of lives that people live here. “A few meters away from my hotel, I found people of various classes living comfortably in different worlds and that inspired me a lot. This is a rare sight in other parts of the globe,” added the filmmaker.