Film still - Peshmerga © MARGO CINEMA
Bernard-Henri Lévy, encounters with the Peshmergas
Four years ago, he returned from Libya with Le Serment de Tobrouk. This year, Bernard-Henri Lévy is back for a Special Screening with a new logbook, Peshmerga, the fruit of six months of exploration along the whole front line that separates Iraqi Kurdistan from Daesh troops.
Peshmerga. In Farsi, it means "those who face death". This is the name of the Kurdish soldiers fighting Daesh. Bernard-Henri Lévy shared their daily lives, their aspirations, and their combat. Rare footage.
“We wanted to see everything. Record everything. We wanted access to the command room, to the theaters of operation, to the outposts. We wanted to be taken to the very battle lines.”
On the front against Daesh, beyond the facts, the battles and the positions of troops, Peshmerga gives names to the men and women who are writing history, from the heights of Mosul or the Sinjar Mountains. With his film crew, Bernard-Henri Lévy travelled 1,000 km in an attempt to depict the fight of a people against obscurantism and jihadism, but also to approach adherents of Eastern Christianity and Islam of Enlightenment.
For the filming, Bernard-Henry Lévy was supported by Gilles Hertzog and producer François Margolin, who had both already worked on Bosnia! and Le Serment de Tobrouk. Unlike these two films, Peshmerga is intended as a more collective experience, less embodied in the person of BHL. He still always presents his perspective, but is more self-effacing in favour of the camaraderie of a team that made the full scope of this ambitious film possible.
