Dersim Zerevan

Biography

Jihan Asaad Sheikhmous (Dersim Zerevan) was born on February 10, 1980 in Qamishlo, Rojava. She is the second child of a family of 8 children, 3 girls and 5 boys. Her activism for social justice started secondary school. She was on the frontlines of the social movements against the persecution of the Kurds by the Syrian regime between 1996-2000. She started to compile guerrilla memoirs and poems at the Literature School in early 2000s. Afterwards, she made researches on Zilan (Zeynep Kınacı) for about three years and prepared a novel in Arabic. She started cinema as a student of Halil Dağ (Halil İbrahim Uysal) after 2004. Her first movie as a director was a documentary about Kurdish revolutionary Sakine Cansız, Sara, my whole life was a struggle. Her second movie was Rûpelên Sor. In 2019, she made a film in Shengal about the Yazidis.