Sabaya
**Seen at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.
“Sabaya” is a word for sex slaves among the Daesh fighters in the Middle East- you know Daesh best as ISIS. This documentary from Hogir Hirori begins after the August 2014 attack on the Yazidi homeland, and chronicles the work of people trying to rescue these women from ISIS. It is a harrowing and inspiring film, and then heartbreaking when you realize that getting them out of ISIS’s hands is just the first step to getting them re-acclimated to life again.
The efforts to save these women are being spearheaded by volunteers of the Yazidi Home Center; the Yazidis are one of the oldest ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq. ISIS has abducted thousands of women and children from the Yazidi for the purpose of being sold and swapped as sex slaves. In addition to the Yazidi Home Center spearheading the effort, some women are volunteering to infiltrate the Al-Hol ISIS Camp as a way to get eyes and ears, and a better understanding of where Yazidi women and children are being kept so that, at night, volunteers from the Home Center can come in a take them out. We see three such missions in “Sabaya,” and the words these women say convey a horror and pain most of us will be fortunate never to deal with ourselves.
Each time Mahmud and Ziyad lead a trip into the camp, there’s suspense and tension as they search for the women or children they are looking for on each mission. To date, they have managed to save over 200 women and children kept as sabaya- 52 of which were pregnant with children sired by Daesh men. There are still plenty more to go; unfortunately, it is unlikely they will get all of them out, but what lives they do save will at least have a chance to start anew, and hopefully, be welcomed back. That’s another story, though; “Sabaya’s” is about the struggles to get them to that second chance, both for themselves, and the Yazidi.
