Birds Fly Back, 2022
two-channel video
On a rugged mountain ridge in the Kurdish uplands of Hani, children gather to play and dance together, telling anecdotes about cows that suddenly vanish and birds that always fly back. For her film installation Birds Fly Back (2022), Jiyan Düyü (1995, Netherlands) made a journey to the ancestral region of her Kurdish family in Turkey. The film is part of a long Kurdish tradition centered on a melancholy longing for the homeland and the Kurdish landscape, often told from a child’s perspective.
Family ties and relationships are the driving themes in the films of Jiyan Düyü. Her work is an ongoing exploration into her roots and her way of processing and placing the events that have formed her life. Her intuitive approach to filming allows her characters to show their most human side, in spite of the presence of the camera.