Halime Akturk

Halime Akturk is a Kurdish award-winning documentary filmmaker, producer, and journalist. Based between Toronto and Europe, she creates films that center untold stories of resilience, displacement, and identity, often through the lens of women and marginalized communities.Her documentaries have been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Toronto Arts Council, and screened internationally across North America and Europe. In 2023, she received the Toronto Arts Foundation’s Newcomer Award for her contribution to the city’s cultural landscape, and later joined the Toronto Arts Council’s Media Artists: Creation Panel, helping shape opportunities for other artists.Her documentaries, often focused on women’s stories and questions of exile and identity, have screened internationally and received awards, including the Best Short Documentary award in Hamburg.

Works showcased at MENA:

Ezda
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Short
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13
 mins
A Yazidi survivor of ISIS’s genocide recounts her three-year captivity, and attempts to come to terms with her trauma while forging a new path for herself and her children in Canada.