Beri Shalmashi
(Paris, 1983) is a Dutch writer and filmmaker with roots in Iranian Kurdistan. She writes edgy columns for Volkskrant.nl in which she reveals an authentic voice. For example, she refused to support Nasrdin Dchar's Ieder1 movement. "I've have too much trauma left over from growing up in the Netherlands, too many experiences of being the Other." Shalmashi moved to Iraqi Kurdistan in 2012 to teach at the university of Erbil and to work on new films. She wrote about how the refugee crisis and the war with IS increasingly disrupted life in the city. Ultimately she returned to Amsterdam in 2015. Shalmashi studied at the Film Academy in Amsterdam and has made various films. The television film Mama, a collaboration with Sanne Vogel, was nominated for a Golden Kalf in 2010. The short film Het front (The Front), about a young woman who wants to go and fight for IS and based on a script by Shalmashi, was shown at NFF 2016.
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Archive available for: Beri Shalmashi
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IS: The Counter-Narrative
The so-called Islamic State is more than a band of rebels or a terror network. Their campaign of terror in conquered villages and cities, their terrorist attacks in Europe, and their written and visual propaganda looks and sounds like a coherent horror story of "the enemy" as well as a recruitment campaign for potential international jihadists. IS publish a glossy magazine and put masses of energy into the recruitment of sympathizers among youth who are seeking identity and meaning in the virtual world. And they don't limit themselves to Muslim youth. In short, IS understands the power of the word and greatly emphasizes the imagination.
In IS: The Counter-Narrative, Hassnae Bouazza directs the conversation about how to counteract the horror campaign and propaganda machine. Dutch-Kurdish Beri Shalmashi offers up a video essay about similar groupings, visual representation and propaganda. Frank Westerman takes us into the past and shows how we in the Netherlands have reacted to extremist acts, and how we could now choose the right words and actions to win the battle of ideas. Arnon Grunberg gets under the skin of jihadists from the West, and wonders whether their existential motivation diverges fundamentally from that of an average Western military on a mission. Rodaan Al Galidi shows us the bigger picture of the relationship between Europe and the Middle East and presents his vision of how to understand IS as a symbol of today's transnational world. He also provides the night's finale in the form of a performed poem; the musical epilogue is by Jeanine Valeriano and her Spoken Beat Night.