House Without Roof

House Without Roof combines a warm sense of humour with grave seriousness in a story of three siblings who meet up in the Iraqi section of Kurdistan to bury their mother. They have spent most of their lives in Germany, and their relationship is rather tense. In the mother’s last will, it is specified that she is to be buried in a distant village, but no one in their extended family really cares about that. So as an impulsive act of love for their mother, the three siblings decide to steal the casket and travel to a place none of them really know where is. The trauma the family experienced when they escaped Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror against the Kurdish population in the 80’s does not feel far away as they travel with their mother’s remains at the back of the truck. As the journey takes them deeper into the unknown, the radio reports that ISIS is coming closer and closer, signaling a new and uncertain future for the Kurdish people in Iraq.

Soleen Yusef (b. 1987) is a young director and writer from Iraq. She has made two short films before making her feature debut House Without Roof. The film was nominated for the Aurora Award at Tromsø International Film Festival earlier this year.