On February 26, Dutch Kurdish screenwriter and director Beri Shalmashi won the Woman in the Media award in the Dutch province of Flevoland, an award that aims to encourage female experts and role models to be more visible in the media.
“The Vrouw in de Media Province Awards have been awarded to twelve women in The Netherlands, one in each province. I won on behalf of Flevoland, where I grew up and where I just had a three-month exhibition on the roots of jin, jiyan, azadi (women, life, freedom),” Shalmashi told Kurdistan Chronicle, referring to the rally cry of protesters in Iran following the death of the 22-year-old Kurd Jina Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iran’s morality police in September 2022.
“The three-step selection process is what makes this award so special, as it involves appreciation from both the field as well as the audience,” she added.
Ik heb de Vrouw in de Media Award Flevoland gewonnen. Ik spreek het vurigst in de media tijdens het duiden van het nieuws over Koerdistan en Iran. Dank voor het begrijpen van mijn strijd. Stemmen voor de landelijke Vrouw in Media Award kan tot 1 maart. https://t.co/Pb0RLObqfX pic.twitter.com/uqAfeZIdR9
— Beri Shalmashi (@BeriShalmashi) February 26, 2024
“First, a jury of well-respected journalists make a long list with candidates for these awards, then audiences vote, and last, a jury of journalists picks a winner from the top three candidates with the highest number of votes regionally. I won for Flevoland unanimously.”
“The committee has sent me the testimonials of people who voted for me, and it moves me to read how they appreciate my patience and balanced choice of words in this hazard of a topic when speaking on radio and television. It sometimes keeps me up at night, to be honest. How do I make space for what I observe as a truth when there are so many different agendas?”
Although Shalmashi won the local provincial award in Flevoland, she did not receive the national award, which was announced on March 8.
“All 12 provincial winners were nominated for the national award. Although I didn’t win that round, I will carry the precious words from the jury and all the people who notice my efforts with me forever,” she said.
A Kurdish perspective
Shalmashi added that she is proud to have won the award, which serves as an acknowledgment of her efforts in “the media to give the Kurdish perspective on regional developments a voice, and making sure we are not neglected when it comes to representation in the uprising in Iran.”
“Also, I try to show other women it’s okay to be your genuine self in the media and make the message matter.”
“I am a screenwriter and director first, but my desire to have Kurdish stories told properly has pulled me into representation as well. When there are matters in the Middle East urgent enough for the Dutch media to focus on, I try to help Dutch journalists filter out the truth from all the state sources – from Iran, for example – that they use to write their copy.”
Shalmashi said her aim in these circumstances is to ensure the right stories are covered with a “just perspective, and that the righteous voices are heard.”
“Sometimes I talk on the radio or on talk shows, and sometimes I redirect audiences to other voices that know more about a specific matter than I do. I also try to encourage and motivate other people to speak up and sometimes train them to prepare for a public broadcast.”
Shalmashi, herself a Kurd from Eastern Kurdistan (northwestern Iran), migrated to the Netherlands in 1986 with her parents. She graduated from the Netherlands Film Academy and obtained her Master of Arts from the Utrecht School of the Arts.
In 2012, she relocated to the Kurdistan Region to pursue film projects and teach, but returned to the Netherlands in 2015 during the war against ISIS.
Her film Mama was nominated for the prestigious Dutch Gouden Kalf Award in 2010. She won the prestigious Zilveren Camera for Storytelling in 2021 for her film Big Village, which tells the story of her parents, who were members of an Iranian Kurdish political party and who were exiled to a village in the Kurdistan Region in the 1980s.
“It’s been 15 years since graduation. I have invested a lot of time to get to know Kurdistan, where I lived and worked for about four years until the rise of ISIS. To keep a long story short: after my return to the Netherlands, I have worked effortlessly to put Kurdish concerns on the agenda and make short films, long films and series about Kurds,” she said.
“Sometimes I get funding, but definitely not all the time. It is extremely hard to get our films made. However, I am proud to be truly embedded in the Dutch film industry, where I work in various roles in the field, including on set, as a curator, as a coach and tutor, in so many roles.”
Last year, she directed and presented the documentary On the Edge of the Revolution for national broadcaster VPRO, which focused on the struggle of the Iranian Kurdish opposition and the role of Jina Mahsa Amini’s death in the uprising in Iran.
“Over half a million people watched the first live broadcast alone. I have won a couple of highly esteemed awards with my work, which also gives me the credibility to keep going. My most recent release is the screenplay for Casting Call, a feature length about Amir, a young man trying to become a famous actor but not really succeeding. I feel privileged to work in a field that so many people dream of, yet again I can’t wait for the bigger projects I am working on to come to your screens.”
