MijFilm



Mij means fog in Kurdish. When asked why he chose Mij as the title of the film company he launched in 2000, Bahman Ghobadi responded, "When I think of my homeland of Kurdistan, I think of the snow, the cold, and the fog. The fog is everywhere. I think that life there is also foggy-economically, politically and socially Kurdistan is kept hidden and blanketed under a layer of fog." The company was established with the primary intention of supporting Kurdish nationalistic cinema. Iran has always been a region that cradled a multitude of different ethnic groups, such as Turkmen, Kurds and Turks, yet the voices of those ethnic groups are rarely expressed in Iranian cinema. MijFilm produces two to three full-length feature films and some short films with ethnic themes each year in the hopes of giving those voices a space to be heard and understood.