An Evini Films Production
Starring: Kurdo Galali, Enwer Shékhani, Pîsheng Berzinji as Jiyan, Choman Hawrami, Derya Qadie, tara Ebdilrahman, Shehla Mehemed, Rubar Ehmed, Perween Shahzade, Nasir Hesen, Niyaz Lateef, Ibrahim Saeed, Shahram Namiq, Ebbas Jajleyi, Umer Chawsheen, Ebdila Pishderi
Make-up Artist: Rubar Ehmed
Editors: Jano Rosebiani, Kawa Akreyi
On-line & Color Correction: Mark Muller
Sound Post production: Alain Pirere (Silent Music)
Dolbey encoding/final mix: Studio L'equip, Brussels
Film Lab: GTC, Paris
Director of Photography: Koutaiba Aljanabi
Producer: Jano Rosebiani
Writer / Director: Jano Rosebiani

✭✭✭✭
The Guardian - The Observer - BBC World

Jiyan is a somber and haunting, yet affectionate, charming, and celebratory portrait of human courage, community, dignity, and resilience."

-Senses of Cinema - Strictly Cinema School (SFS)

"An accomplished and moving feature from writer-director Jano Rosebiani.”

-Channel 4, London

"Jiyan is a beautiful film, as cherishable as a late spring bloom.”

-The Daily Telegraph

"Intended as the first part in a trilogy examining contemporary Kurdish experience, self-taught film-maker Rosebiani’s powerful and moving feature tackles head-on one of the most violent episodes in the ongoing oppression of his beleaguered people...The film is at once intimate and expansive, detailing the cycle of hard lives against an unrelenting, challenging but also bleakly beautiful landscape.
"...It’s an authentic, compassionate and valuable expression of witness, memory and shared humanity."

-Gareth Evans, 46th London Film Festival

"Seeing a film like this in the London Film Festival reminds you why you want to be in film making in the first place. It has all the ingredients that make a memorable and fantastic film."

-Jaab Mees, Talking Pictures, London

"The film takes us to the center of the volcano, so to speak, with a film whose heart and soul are as big and beautiful as the eyes of its brightest star, Pisheng Berzinji, as the orphan Jiyan, 10... not to mention the whole assortment of delightful characters who populate this drama, some who'll make you smile, some who'll make you cry, and all who will make you care."

-John Dolen, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

"Jiyan gives a human face to the massacre, which despite its magnitude drew only subdued attention from the international community... Kurdish/American filmmaker Jano Rosebiani's drama nonetheless provides moving, often poetic testimony to the tragedy and to the will of the devastated people to heal and rebuild."

-David Rooney, Daily Variety

"Filmed with a patient, lyrical humanism plainly inspired by such Iranian masters as Kiarostami and Panahi, Jiyan manages to unflinchingly address the horrors man can inflict upon his fellows without surrendering to cynicism or despair."

-28th Seattle International Film Festiva

"Rosebiani... manages to keep his storytelling spry, humorous and as uplifting as it is heartbreaking, while taking us through a litany of the town’s ills."

-Eric Moore, 11th Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema

"Lyrical and poetic, enchanting and life-enhancing, a subtle interweaving of elements, a tapestry."

-Adrian Bailly, Pertier Media, Liverpool, UK

"Jiyan is a symbol for Kurdish survival - for the vulnerability of the nation but especially, for its optimism regarding life; the flowers of the protagonist contrast with her scarred face. Jano Rosebiani does not seek revenge, even if one senses his bitterness. He is equally interested in the insecurity the future holds as he is in the poetry and the vitality of the orphans. This dualism is the source of the film's poetic lyricism, of its opening and closing images."

-19th Jerusalem Film Festival

"[Cinematographer] Koutaiba’s genuine eye for the beauty and hardship on the faces of the Kurdish people is very impressive indeed...Truly inspiring films like Jiyan should be cherished and talented filmmakers like Jano Rosebiani should be embraced."

-Jaab Mees, Talking Pictures, London

"This moving, deeply compassionate story is a plea for us to take the Kurdish question, in all its aspects, seriously."

-14th Galway Film Fleadh, Ireland

Synopsis

On 16 March 1988, five days before one of the most important Kurdish feast days (Newruz), Iraqi planes bombed the Kurdish town of Halabja with mustard gas, nerve gas and cyanide. Within a few minutes, 5000 men, women and children died through suffocation or burning. Despite the scale of the slaughter, international reactions were subdued and no severe sanctions or reprisals were taken against the Iraqi government.

Jiyan is set against the background of these events. Five years after the attack, the Kurdish American Diyari returns to his homeland to set up an orphanage in Halabja. He slowly gets to know the people of the town, such as the man who has sat playing the flute day and night on a rooftop ever since he lost his wife and eight children to the chemical attack. But most attention is focused on ten-year old orphan Jiyan, who along with her protective 12-year old cousin, Sherco, are the sole survivors in their family. A strong bond between Diyari and Jiyan ensues and later he names the new orphanage after her.

Jiyan is a popular girl's name in Kurdistan meaning life.

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