Accidental collage based on stills from the film Darên bi tenê by the Komîna Fîlm a Rojava (Rojava Film Commune).
This call for support is written at a critical moment, as the political situation in Rojava continues to escalate, placing the people of the region under unprecedented pressure and intensifying the urgency to defend the right to Kurdish self-determination.
Since 2012, the people of Rojava have been creating what the world’s imperialist powers have long declared unattainable: a society grounded in women’s liberation, radical democracy, ecological responsibility, and genuine multiethnic coexistence. Today, this experiment is facing a direct assault. Its people are resisting, and across the world, people are mobilizing to defend Rojava and the values it embodies.
Over the years, many cultural institutions worldwide have engaged with the Kurdish Liberation Movement and the Rojava Revolution through exhibitions, film screenings, lectures, and discussions. The movement’s feminist liberation principles, grassroots democratic practices, and ecological visions have inspired significant cultural programs. Many Kurdish artists are widely recognized and praised for their resistance-based and politically engaged artistic practices. Contemporary art institutions as well as curators have politicized their own work through the integration of many of these artists.
The Komîna Fîlm a Rojava (Rojava Film Commune), for example, is a collective that has been invited to participate in major exhibitions such as Documenta 15; their films have been screened in multiple locations, and their community-oriented approach to filmmaking led them to deliver the International Freedom Lecture at the 2020 International Film Festival Rotterdam. One of the collective’s cofounders, Diyar Hesso, was working only recently in November 2025 on the 5th Mihrîcana Filman a Navneteweyî ya Rojava (Rojava International Film Festival). Today, like many others from the collective, he is on the front line:
What is happening now is an attempt to destroy and culturally erase everything the Rojava revolution has built over the past fourteen years. In such a moment, art cannot exist outside the people’s resistance, it can only be part of it. Art helps defend collective existence; it recalls the essential values that make a people who they are. It remains a space for production, aesthetics, and social and political critique, yet at this moment many have had to choose resistance instead. Existence must be defended so that art and stories can continue to be made—not as individual expression, but as part of collective memory, culture, and society. Right now, I am not making art. I am fighting, so that art can be made at all.
These practices of cultural production and resistance are not confined to artistic collectives alone, but extend into the social structures of everyday life shaped in Rojava. Alongside the Komîna Fîlm a Rojava, projects such as Jinwar, the women-led village in which women live independently of patriarchal structures, have likewise become a point of reference through numerous discursive events, video works, and screenings. As a lived social project, Jinwar stands as one of the most emblematic expressions of Rojava’s deeply rooted feminist foundation. Delal, a mother from Jinwar village, describes this reality as follows:
The Rojava Revolution is a women’s revolution. This is not a slogan, but a reality lived concretely in everyday life. Women in Rojava lead society not only under conditions of war, but in every sphere of life … We organize ourselves according to our own conditions, through autonomous and communal forms of life, in order to protect our own lives and social existence. Everyone, with their own means and strength, works to keep life going. This effort is not only about survival, but about resistance. No matter how harsh the conditions, this resistance is stronger than fear …
Defending Rojava and the women’s revolution cannot be achieved through armed struggle alone—social action, political positioning, media work, pressure on states, and material as well as moral solidarity are essential components of this resistance.
While the inclusion of these political struggles in the realms of arts and culture has been invaluable, there is an urgent need to move beyond symbolic representation. It is time to revisit these public moments of engagement and take active steps toward solidarity.
Today, jihadists in suits—enabled by global powers—are moving to erase Rojava as a living alternative. Their aim is not merely to seize territory, but to extinguish the proof that another way of life is possible. They want to show the world that alternative forms of society and political imagination cannot last, that resistance is futile. The occupation of Rojava would give a green light to violent, capitalist, fascist authoritarianism everywhere, proclaiming that no matter what we build or how much we sacrifice, colonial violence will always prevail.
This is an urgent call to bridge the gap between the ideals articulated in cultural programs and the lived realities of those struggling for liberation on the ground today. The stakes could not be higher; they demand concrete action—an approach that the field of contemporary art has yet to step up to. We understand the complexities and limitations that cultural institutions and workers often face, but are confident that collective effort can lead to meaningful alliances and strategic collaboration.
We invite everyone to reach out to cultural organizations, as well as curators, artists, and scholars you have worked with, to try to mobilize within the field of arts and culture. This is an urgent nudge to reactivate existing connections and to build on shared commitments, so that solidarity is not only declared, but practiced.
Here are a few ways to easily offer support by sharing material and immaterial resources:
–Revisiting past programs by resharing related artworks through your platforms (social media, newsletters, etc.) and contextualizing them within the current political situation.
–Accompanying these communications with calls for donations.
–Organizing fundraising campaigns or solidarity events.
–Involving artists and cultural workers in Rojava through interviews and online participation.
–Initiating new collaborative projects with actors in Rojava in the near future.
We are very willing to support or collaborate in organizing any of these efforts.
Berxwedan jiyan e – Resistance is life.
In solidarity and best wishes,
Zehra Doğan and Duygu Örs, with fellow Kurdish art workers
For further information or to get in touch, please contact officeforpoliticalartaffairs@gmail.com
Related petitions and calls
A call for solidarity from the university of Rojava and Kobani:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DTyy5BPigPV/?img_index=1
A call for solidarity from Kurdish film festivals:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DUAt_vLCJec/?img_index=1
News
https://rojavainformationcenter.org/
https://www.theamargi.com/
https://english.anf-news.com/
Donations
Humanitarian aid: https://heyvasor.com/de/spende/
Humanitarian aid: https://www.medico.de/jetzt-spenden?tw_target=Rojava
Cultural aid: https://kurdistanhilfe.de/kino-in-amude/
Other donation projects by the Kurdistanhilfe e.V.: https://kurdistanhilfe.de/projekte/
