A Flag Without a Country - dreaming of the future while the present holds you back

This unusual documentary is an interesting tale of Kurdish celebrity, mixing doc footage, scripted scenes and reconstructions of past events.  It cuts between the life of pilot Nuriman and singer Helan (aka Helly Luv), recently returned to Kurdistan from Finland where her family fled during her childhood.

It’s a charming film, and a different take to what you might expect to a film about a place looking after thousands of refugees and with the fight against ISIS creeping into view as the film progresses. But instead of focussing on the dark and tragic, the message here is of unusual characters seeking achieve their dreams and serve their people by inspiring them against the odds.

The best sections are undoubtedly those about indefatigable pilot Nuriman, whose determination and geniality stop their being anything laughable about his slightly madcap schemes – this is a man who first gained fame in Kurdistan by building a homemade plane and being a self-taught pilot, in order to fly to visit a long lost love in Iran during the Iran-Iraq war – and surviving! His spirits are a little lower after a plane crash during an election stunt, but he is determined to inspire refugee kids by building another plane with them and teaching them the basics of being a pilot. His journey is wonderfully and affectionately told.

The mixture of recreated scenes and documentary worked slightly less well on the scenes about singer Helan, as they had a bit of reality TV feel rather than the more sincere tone of a documentary and the contrast between her current showbiz life and the harshness of her childhood sometimes jarred rather than strengthening the power of each story by providing contrast to each other. It might not have helped that her story opens with her scavenging and borrowing AK47s, a lion and some Kurdish refugee children from Syria. It turned to be for a music video, but it was a very unnerving start! But Helan also shows an indefatigable spirit and it is hard not to warm to her eventually.

This is a film trying to show the power of the belief of a people without their own state through two very individual characters and maybe occasionally overdid the national pride rather than being fully objective. But it is understandable give the context of the film as the consequences of the conflict in Syria and the rest of Iraq spill over into Kurdistan and the Peshmerga organise to fight back. All in all this is a different and interesting look at Kurdistan and a portrait of a place growing in confidence and success just before calamity starts to seep through its borders.