Courageous documentary follows the rescue of Yazidi women
WHEN the Islamic State overran northern Iraq’s Sinjar province in 2014, thousands of Kurdish Yazidi men were killed in the ensuing genocide.
And thousands of women were kidnapped, taken by ISIS terrorists to be raped and sold into slavery.
That is the grim historical background to ‘Sabaya,’ in which filmmaker Hogir Hirori follows a team of volunteers that tries to free Yazidi women, one by one, from captivity.
Their focus is al-Hol, a sprawling camp in northeastern Syria where that country’s forces have been detaining the wives and children of the ISIS fighters they have imprisoned.
Taking advantage of that circumstance, a Yazidi humanitarian named Mahmoud Rasho – helped by a team of unimaginably brave women who have gone undercover in the camp – works day and night to identify potential beneficiaries of what has clearly become his life’s obsession.
Swedish Kurdish director Hirori assumes an intimate, observational stance toward his subjects, of whom Mahmoud is but one: Compulsively smoking and checking his phone, he’s surrounded by the cheerful complaining of his wife Siham, who notes that he’s never home; his mother Zahra, who has opinions too (mostly about cooking); and his irrepressible son Shadi.
The relaxed warmth of Mahmoud’s family is a shock to the young women he rescues – the title ‘Sabaya’ comes from the term the group of captives are known as – but soon becomes a safe, loving space in which to process trauma that is profound and sure to be longlasting.
While much of Hirori’s film plays like a thriller (at one point Mahmoud and his colleagues are chased and fired upon by the ISIS sympathizers that surround their nonprofit’s modest complex), the scenes of Zahra’s wordless support as she hovers close to a girl breaking down are by far the most memorable.
And these are girls: One protagonist in ‘Sabaya’ was abducted when she was only 2 years old.
To this unspeakable injustice is added the brutal fact that, if they have children, they must leave them behind to reenter Yazidi society.
As absorbing and illuminating as ‘Sabaya’ is – and as courageous as it is as an act of filmmaking – the viewer can’t escape the fact that it’s men who have taken these women hostage, men who are rescuing them and men to whom they are returning, as long as they obey their conditions and patriarchal codes.
‘Sabaya’ ends on a positive but also muted note, with a van returning a group of women to their families, then picking up another group of women to go undercover in al-Hol (many of them having already been freed from there).
Hundreds of women have been liberated, Hirori tells us, paying tribute to the selfless efforts of Mahmoud and others.
There are thousands still waiting.
Unrated. 3 stars. Contains adult themes and disturbing images.
In Kurdish and Arabic with subtitles. 90 minutes.
Ratings Guide: Four stars masterpiece, three stars very good, two stars OK, one star poor, no stars waste of time. — The