In the past few years, the Associació Catalana per la Pau (Catalan Peace Association) has intensified its collaborations and synergies with the cultural sector, as it is an excellent tool to raise awareness in society on issues of human rights and solidarity. It is for this reason that the association has prepared a November full of activities to bring, in this case, Kurdish culture to citizens in Catalunya.

Today, film director Şerif Ciçek, from Amed in North Kurdistan, will attend the screening of the films Love in the face of Genocide (by Sero Hindi) and The language of the mountain (by Lisa Calan) at 7 p.m. at the Cineclub El Cercle (Barcelona) and at the screening of his own film, Tearing Walls Down, tomorrow, Thursday, 16 November at 8 p.m. at the Cines Girona (Barcelona).

The documentary by Şerif Çiçek and Hebun Polat portrays the life and political work of Aysel Tuğluk, Figen Yüksekdağ and Gültan Kışanak - three democratically elected politicians from the HDP and BDP who were imprisoned in 2016 in the wave of repression after the peace process with the Kurdish movement was ended unilaterally by the Turkish government. The fourth protagonist of the film is the former MP Sibel Yiğitalp, who lives in exile and is still fighting for her acquittal and the release of her imprisoned comrades. The documentary is a sequel to the film "Prison or Exile" and impressively conveys the pressure and repression the opposition in Turkey is under and yet does not give up.

Ciçek worked at the Rojava Film Commune between 2017 and 2018, and then moved to Germany to work as a director and producer at Art Records Production.

The series of film screenings is organized jointly with the Observatori de Vídeo no Identificat (OVNI) and the Catalan Federation of Cineclubs.

The full program can be found here