"Neighbors" by Mano Khalil
The Kurdish-Swiss filmmaker Mano Khalil will be present for our New York screening of his acclaimed 2021 film Neighbors.
The film is based on Khalil’s personal story of growing up Kurdish under the Assad dictatorship. As a Kurdish man native to Syria, he is undertaking the tour to raise awareness of the DAANES (also known as Rojava), currently under attack by Turkish-backed proxy militias and by Turkish drones and air strikes.
Synopsis: In a Syrian border village in the early 1980s, young Sero attends school for the first time. A new teacher has arrived with the goal of making strapping Pan-Arabic comrades out of the Kurdish children. To enable paradise to come to earth, he uses the rod to forbid the Kurdish language, orders the veneration of Assad and preaches hate of the “Zionist enemy”—the Jews. The lessons upset and confuse Sero because his longtime neighbors are a lovable Jewish family. With a fine sense of humor and satire, the film depicts a childhood which manages to find light moments between dictatorship and dark drama. The film was inspired by the director’s personal experiences, and so his bittersweet memories connect the Syrian tragedy to the present.
Read a review of the film by Lena Streitwieser here. Read more about Mano Khalil here. This screening is the first stop on Khalil’s three-week North American tour.
