Kurdish Documentary on Ezidi Survivors Selected for Ahmedabad Festival
Shamal Huseen's documentary Life After Freedom, about young Ezidi survivors rebuilding after ISIS captivity, has been selected to compete at the Ahmedabad International Film Festival in India.
ERBIL (Kurdistan24) - Life After Freedom, a documentary by Kurdish filmmaker Shamal Huseen about young Ezidi survivors rebuilding their lives after liberation from ISIS captivity, has been selected to compete at the 16th Ahmedabad International Film Festival in India.
Huseen told Kurdistan24 on Friday that the 22-minute documentary focuses not only on the suffering endured by Ezidi survivors, but on what comes after liberation, the difficult process of rebuilding ordinary life while living with the psychological and social consequences of captivity.
"This 22-minute documentary tells a moving human story about the lives of young Ezidi Kurds after their liberation from ISIS," Huseen said.
He said the film follows a young Ezidi woman and man as they seek to begin again through marriage, family life and attempts to restore a sense of normality after severe trauma.
"The documentary presents the lives of a young Ezidi woman and man after their liberation from ISIS, a life in which liberation did not mark the end, but rather the beginning of a new struggle to build a normal life," Huseen said.
Huseen said he deliberately sought to move the documentary beyond a simple retelling of the atrocities committed by ISIS.
"I tried not only to recount past events, but also to focus on life after liberation, when survivors must live with the psychological and social consequences of their past while simultaneously planning their future," he told Kurdistan24.
That approach places resilience and recovery at the center of the film.
The documentary explores how survivors attempt to build relationships, create families and re-enter social life despite carrying the effects of violence, captivity and displacement.
The story is rooted in the wider experience of the Ezidi community, which suffered mass killings, abductions, enslavement and forced displacement when ISIS attacked Sinjar in 2014.
The Kurdistani Diaspora Confederation said the film's selection for Ahmedabad follows earlier screenings in the United States and marks another step in its international festival journey.
The KDC reported that selected films are scheduled to screen on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, with the festival concluding on Oct. 2 with an awards ceremony.
The 2026 edition is organized by Rainbow Events and Om Guru Films, according to the confederation.
Festival organizers say thousands of films from around the world have been submitted this year. The source material provided to Kurdistan24 puts the figure at more than 4,700 entries from 150 countries.
Life After Freedom had previously been selected for the American-Egyptian Arts and Film Festival in New York in 2025.
Kurdistan24 reported at the time that Huseen's film was among the productions competing at the festival and that it focused on Ezidi men and women trying to reclaim normal life after surviving ISIS atrocities.
For Huseen, the international festival circuit offers a way to bring the long-term consequences of ISIS violence before audiences far beyond Kurdistan.
Rather than portraying liberation as a final resolution, Life After Freedom asks what happens when survivors return to ordinary life after extraordinary trauma.
That question gives the documentary its central focus: survival does not end with freedom from captivity.
The challenge that follows is how to rebuild dignity, relationships and a future.
Its selection for the Ahmedabad International Film Festival therefore gives the documentary another international platform to tell that story, and to present the experiences of Ezidi survivors through a lens centered not only on suffering, but on resilience, renewal and the effort to begin again.