Mediha
Hasan Oswald / United States / 2023 / International Premiere / 90 min
A teenage girl from northern Iraq is fighting to bring her former Islamic State hostage taker to justice for the terrorist movement's biggest crime to date.
Mediha is a teenage girl from northern Iraq and part of the Yazidi ethnic minority. A people that Islamic State displaced and surrounded on Mount Sinjar in 2014 in a genocide that shook the world and proved to be Islamic State’s greatest crime. Mediha and her younger brothers, Ghazwan and Adnan, escaped with their lives, but were kidnapped and sold into slavery. Mediha, who has only recently returned from captivity, turns the camera on herself to process her trauma. Together with her brothers, they try to return to life while still searching for their missing father, mother and younger brother. Through video diaries, Mediha talks about her grief, deprivation and post-traumatic aftershocks. But that’s not all she’s ready to talk about. A touching portrait of a budding activist holding her family together while dealing with a horrific past and trying to bring her captor to justice.