Sabaya (2021)
Coming Out at July 30, 2021 on Paramount+
Documentary
Sabaya is documentary film directed and written by Hogir Hirori. The film primiered at January 30, 2021 on Sundance Film Festival.
Armed with just a mobile phone and a gun, Mahmud, Ziyad and other volunteers from the Yazidi Home Center risk their lives trying to save Yazidi women and girls being held by ISIS members as sabaya (sex slaves) in the most dangerous refugee camp in the Middle East, Al-Hol in Syria.
Often accompanied by burka-clad female infiltrators and working mostly at night, they must act quickly to avoid potential violence. In this visceral, often edge-of-your-seat film, we experience both the tense situation in the camp and the comfort of daily life at home, where Mahmud’s wife, Siham, and his mother, Zahra, lovingly help the traumatized girls shed off the black garments of an ideology that tolerates nothing but itself.
Director: Hogir Hirori
Writer: Hogir Hirori