“A revolution within a revolution.”
Her War: Women vs. ISIS
The YPJ (Women's Protection Units) is an all-female Kurdish movement fighting the “Islamic State” in Syria. Previously unheard of until 2013, the YPJ grew with waves of volunteers defending their lands from ISIS expansion in Syria’s poor northern farmlands. While fighting the world’s largest terror group, the YPJ seeks to build “a new society”, based on gender equality, democracy, socialism and environmentalism, despite opposition from conservative forces in the region.
This is the story of new YPJ recruits like Golan, Amara, Chichek, Binefsh and their commander, Tolheldan. We were the first foreign film crew allowed to live on a YPJ base during training, 3 km from the frontline with ISIS. This film was to be the first in a series profiling the YPJ/YPG, as they expanded from three besieged patches of territory in the north to take control of roughly 1/3 of Syria. In July 2017 — a feat that was nearly impossible to imagine during the making of “Her War” — we met some of the same girls again, as they stormed the capital of ISIS, Raqqa (The Road to Raqqa).
