Film on disappeared people on Turkey awarded

The film Bir (Well) by Veysi Altay has won the Naples Human Rights Cinema Festival.

In the ‘90s hundreds of people in Kurdistan were arrested and taken into custody. They were questioned under torture and killed. Their killers made sure the bodies went missing. Many victims were thrown from helicopters or buried in wells full of acid.

Thousands have been killed by paramilitary forces - like Jitem and Hizbullah - financed and supported by the State.

The documentary tells the story of 7 people, among them 4 children, who disappeared in the city of Kerboran (Dargeçit) in 1995 and of the relentless search for their rests carried out by their families.

Veysi Altay is a director from Mesopotamia Cinema Production 13, the Mezopotamya Kultur Merkez (Mesopotamia Cultural Centre) cinema production company.

He had recently told ANF on the 27th anniversary of the MKM in Istanbul that “the MKM was founded in a time when the Kurdish language, culture and all colours of Mesopotamia people were forbidden”.

Those years, were also the years of the disappearances in state forces custody, as the Saturday Mothers remind the world every Saturday in Istanbul, Amed, Batman, Izmir.