INTERVIEW: Even though the news cycle changes, Mediha is still here
Photo: Mediha follows one set of siblings 10 years after violence separated their family. Photo courtesy of filmmaker / Provided by official site.
The new documentary Mediha, directed by Hasan Oswald, follows the title character, a young Yazidi girl named Mediha Alhamad, as she attempts to piece together her life after surviving ISIS captivity, according to press notes. With her brothers, Ghazwan and Adnan, by her side, Mediha’s journey takes her from Iraq to Turkey to Syria, all with the memories of the genocide that upturned her life and devastated her family.
Mediha, which features the subject holding the camera to tell her own story, is now playing in movie theaters. For Oswald, these past few weeks have been particularly moving now that audience members are able to share with him the impact of Mediha’s story.
“It’s overwhelming,” Oswald said in a recent phone interview. “Of course, it appears to be coming to an end, but at the same time, we’re now launching into award season and impact season. So it’s ramping up in ways, but coming to a close in ways. It’s sort of mindblowing the reception this is getting. I was happy with the movie that we made, and I had high hopes for it. But it’s, of course, exceeded all of my expectations, so it’s overwhelming, it’s exciting. I think the most important thing is that Mediha has been along for the journey, and she’s sort of thriving in parallel with it.”
Oswald had wanted to tell the story of the Yazidi people and the violence they faced one decade ago, but he didn’t get over to Iraq until 2019. Still, the story was ongoing, and sadly he had not missed the chance to tell this narrative.
“What you saw in the film and what had happened in 2014 is still current to this day,” he said. “It’s not like I arrived, and everything was finished — unfortunately. So day one we knew we had to find someone special to carry this collaboration. I had been interested in rebalancing this power structure between participant and director, and I had been interested in that for a while. I knew it would take someone sort of incredible to bear the weight of that collaboration, and I found Mediha almost right away through our incredible producer, Annelise Mecca, who is over there doing NGO work. We were off to the races.”
The documentary features no talking heads trying to contextualize the conflict. Instead, the film only features the first-person narrative of Mediha and her family in personal testimonials. She is both subject and cinematographer.
“Whatever Mediha wanted to talk about, whatever subtleties she wanted to present her story to the world with, that was the direction we let her lead,” Oswald said. “So, for example, she doesn’t comment on any of the complex, complex geopolitical tensions in the region, religious tensions, tribal tensions. She doesn’t comment on any of them, so we let her lead the way in that. I think the end product kind of speaks for itself. It’s not a story about ISIS. It’s not a story about sexual enslavement or refugees. It’s a coming-of-age story of a young Iraqi Yazidi girl in the foothills of Iraq that had to deal with the unimaginable and has to deal with the unimaginable because this is now 10 years on since the genocide.”
Oswald added: “The news cycle moves on very quickly. The public’s attention moves very quickly. While they might move on quickly, kids like Mediha, her brothers, they do not move on quickly, so she always says, she knows there’s another Mediha, another Ghazwan being created every day in these conflicts. We see them as the human side of conflict, and we wanted to present that to the world as Mediha wanted it presented to the world.”
The director said it was important that Mediha raises awareness about the Yazidi genocide. He is sort of amazed that only 10 years after the violence, people have forgotten and moved on.
“So it’s definitely to refocus the spotlight in particular on the Yazidi cause,” he said. “As a whole, it’s to hopefully make people aware that again conflict happens, the world moves on from the headlines. These kids and these victims do not move on. They carry physical, mental scars with them for the rest of their life, so we wanted to show that while the Yazidi genocide had ended, Mediha and her brothers still very much carry it and carry it with them to this day.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Mediha, directed by Hasan Oswald, is now playing in movie theaters. Click here for more information.
