Sabaya (15)
Directed by Hogir Hirori
 

“Daesh feel they have the right to use Sabaya girls as personal slaves. To rape them and sell them. Many of the girls commit suicide to escape the hell they’ve been in,” reveals a member of The Yazidi Home Centre in Syria, which carries out dangerous rescue missions in this powerful and harrowing documentary by Hogir Hirori.

The Kurdish film-maker (acting as writer-director, cinematographer, editor and producer) follows the non-profit organisation’s Mahmud and Ziyad, who with just a gun and a mobile phone enter one of the most dangerous camps in the Middle East – al-Hol Camp in Syria – to save Yazidi young women, called Sabaya (sex slaves), hidden there by the Daesh (Isis) which had kidnapped them following the massacre of the Yazidis in northern Iraq in 2014.

Nothing can really prepare you for the horrors and inhumanity suffered by these young women abducted at the ages of 12 to 14 to be at the service of Isis fighters who treat them as their property. Many having children fathered by them.

At times it feels like you are watching something unreal, a spine-chilling thriller or a mockumentary as the film captures the meticulous planning of these mission impossible operations, which includes placing girl infiltrators into the camp to find the victims.

When identified Mahmud and his team put their lives on the line by going in to get these girls out. Their heartbreaking testimonies follow.

This horror show hits home when they rescue seven-year-old Mitra who was taken when she was just one year old. I have no words as I well up by just recalling the scene.

It is an extraordinary piece of cinema, it is also the third film in Hirori’s trilogy about the plight of the Yazidi people, the unbearable and unacceptable consequences of war, the abuse and suffering but also about humanity and compassion.

I can’t help fearing this is the future to come of women and young girls in Afghanistan.