The Phantom Pain of Rojava review – Kurdish veterans of the war against IS tell story of courage and survival
Maryam Ebrahimi's documentary follows injured Kurdish veterans in the Rojava region of Syria, focusing on female fighters who battled Islamic State.
Filming at the funeral of a female army commander, documentarian Maryam Ebrahimi notes it is the first time she has seen women carrying a coffin in the Middle East. Her tender, gentle film centers on a home for injured army veterans in Rojava, the Kurdish-led autonomous socialist region in northern Syria. Most are survivors of the war against Islamic State (IS). The house is mixed gender; one resident, Fadakhar, has had both legs amputated and is haunted at night by phantom itches and pains.
Ebrahimi's gaze is drawn especially to the female veterans, who made headlines a decade ago for their battlefield courage. The film reveals that women began leaving their villages to fight IS in 2011. The commander in charge of the home is Sorkhin, an Iranian Kurd whose gentleness belies her reputation for saving Yazidi women and girls enslaved by IS. She says her mission has always been: “Everything I have done is for women … I want women to live as human beings.” Like many commanders, she lives in constant hyper-vigilance, a target for Turkish drones sent to assassinate Kurdish military leaders.
Another resident is Zarin, an expert sniper who served under Sorkhin and was shot in the head. Her brain injury has largely robbed her of speech, but she tells the camera, beaming: “I was wounded for democracy.” The film also captures a Rojava tradition at the cemetery, where women dig the soil with bare hands as a final act of solidarity with their fallen sister.
