The Rain Bride + Nietzschean Suicide + Q&A

14th London Kurdish Film Festival event program

In Duhok, Reber and Lori, a married couple, run a traditional dance group. As the war against ISIS escalates, Reber, a former de-miner, rejoins the peshmerga fighters. Now alone and independent, Lori grapples with society’s and her parents-in-law’s demands about how a single woman should live. Hussein Hassan, one of the most profiled directors from Iraqi Kurdistan, puts the spotlight on a society that is weary of old-fashioned conventions and destructive wars.

Plus fiction short NIETZSCHEAN SUICIDE; “Nietzschean Suicide” tells the story of pharmacist Dr Samuel, who lives with his pregnant wife in a sad, war-torn city and sells suicide drugs in his strange pharmacy.When the city’s only midwife, Mrs Sissi, comes in one day with her “suicide prescription,” he realizes he must delay her death until after his child is born. His initial plan backfires on him but he eventually invents an unconventional suicide method that keeps Sissi alive long enough to deliver his child. The method quickly proves popular with his customers and can revive their will to live.