CONFLICT IN REPRESENTATION Hussein Hassan’s The Dark Wind and the Plight of the Yazidis

There’s a great deal of expectation that comes with being first. That’s certainly true of Hussein Hassan’s The Dark Wind (2016), the first film about the attempted genocide of the Mesopotamian Yazidi people by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). For many viewers, it embodies an introduction to a religion and people that would have been previously unfamiliar. I’m not just referring to myself here. Upon awarding the 2016 APSA Cultural Diversity Award, under the patronage of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), to Hassan, international jury member Nansun Shi observed that ‘[c]oming to these Awards, I had not realised the subject matter of the Yazidis, and we wanted to highlight this to the world, and bring more attention to these people’.

By extension, The Dark Wind being the first feature about the Yazidi community’s suffering also makes it the only film on the subject; thus, it can be perceived as representing a definitive document of this Kurdish culture. But the incensed reaction of many Yazidis to the film – which included protests and the threat of lawsuits – suggests the sensitivity of the material. That reaction isn’t without merit. Watching the film without prior knowledge of the culture, I couldn’t help but form an impression of the ethno-religious group that was far from universally positive.

It’s difficult to determine the accuracy of Hassan’s portrayal of the Yazidi people; though it’s worth examining the intricacies