Mediha review – remarkable Yazidi victim of Islamic State’s sexual slavery tells her own story

After her village was destroyed, Mediha Ibrahim Alhamad was sold aged 10 by IS. With determination and charm she navigates a difficult aftermath

This is impressive work from film-maker Hasan Oswald that allows its subject, as far as possible, to tell her own story. Mediha Ibrahim Alhamad is a teenage girl from Kurdish northern Iraq and a member of the Yazidi religious group, subject to much bigotry from extreme Islamism. Oswald appears to have come across her extraordinary story quite by chance, when he was told about it by his Yazidi translator while working in the region on a quite different project.

In 2014, Mediha’s family was shattered by the Islamic State massacre of their village in Sinjar. Thousands of Yazidi were kidnapped; the women were sold into sexual slavery, and the boys often forced to be child soldiers. Mediha and two of her three brothers were finally brought back; her father is presumed dead but her third brother and mother are thought to be still alive. For a lot of the time, Oswald simply hands the camera over to Mediha (and sometimes her brothers) and lets her show us, with honesty and unaffected charm, her life with her kindly, careworn uncle, pursuing a legal action against her captor, having therapy for PTSD and trying not to lose hope as various aid workers bring news of possible sightings of missing family members.

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Mediha review – remarkable Yazidi victim of Islamic State’s sexual slavery tells her own story

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