All My Mothers

The Kurdish women in All My Mothers are not introduced by their age or position in life, but rather by the number of people they have lost. Beautifully filmed with side lighting, an old, wrinkled woman tells us how she has been waiting 23 years and six months for the return of her loved ones. During an Iraqi attack in the 1980s, she lost a total of 30 who were dear to her, and now she is just one of hundreds of women who are waiting. Women who remember, as if it were yesterday, how their husbands were called to a "meeting" in Kirkuk -- never to be seen again. The rain that hammers down incessantly in the background in many scenes reinforces the atmosphere of sorrow, absence, and loneliness. The women help one another get by from day to day by talking, crying, praying, and giving each other massages. And it is not only the older generation that mourns the dead -- younger women miss their fathers and brothers, and realize that their chances of marrying are slight, as there are hardly any young men left in the village. A military funeral leads up to a grand finale, in which images of weeping, fainting women and archive footage of executions speak for themselves. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)