Award: Best Documentary Film Award – 6th edition of the Kobani International Film Festival 2025 “Here the Story Begins”

The film received the Best Documentary Film Award for transforming music, memory, and cultural identity into a quiet act of human resistance through an intimate documentary language rooted in dignity, freedom, and emotional truth.

Synopsis:

For decades, Habibullah has devoted his life to singing Kurdish poetry and folk songs, preserving collective memory and cultural identity through music. But when a local mullah attempts to silence him, the conflict gradually evolves into something deeper than a personal disagreement — a confrontation between art, authority, and freedom itself.

The film does not portray its protagonist as a heroic figure, but rather as a humble man carrying fear, vulnerability, and an unshakable attachment to his voice and songs. With every performance, music becomes an act of resistance against silence and erasure.

Through an intimate documentary approach, the film focuses on small everyday details, where silent faces, rural spaces, and natural sounds become essential parts of the cinematic structure. With restrained realism and quiet visual rhythm, the film reveals how music can survive as a final refuge for memory, dignity, and human freedom.

About the Director:

Adnan Zandi, born in Kurdistan-Iran in 1985, is a Kurdish-Iranian writer and filmmaker holding both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Cinema. His short and documentary films have screened at hundreds of international festivals, including Sheffield DocFest, Beirut Film Festival, and Amsterdam Kurdish Film Festival.

His cinematic work often focuses on marginalized individuals and themes connected to identity, freedom, and cultural memory, combining documentary realism with an intimate human-centered visual language.