I AM NO LONGER AFRAID
OF THE NIGHT

Helia and Sama made a choice: to confront the violence they had to endure as women and as Kurdish.
How ? By enlisting to become peshmerga , « those who face death », a name given to Kurdish rebels.
These two young Kurdish women from Iran have three months to undertake a guerilla training. They will have to practice with twenty male comrades, in the encampment of the Komala faction. This Kurdish opposition party, entrenched in the mountain ranges between Iran and Iraq, organizes itself clandestinely, and has waged a guerilla for decades against the harsh repression of the Islamic Republic of Iran towards the Kurdish minority.
They have three months to confirm their choice and to overcome each challenge until the final trial which will give them the status for which they have left everything and risked their lives. Three months to exist again and covertly take arms to defend their lives in Iran. On the heights of the mountains between Iraq and Iran, out of the frontlines, we follow Helia and Sama during their political and military formation. In the mud or under the snow, times of relief and contradictions, of outbursts of anger or laughter, of despair and doubt, give way to moments of blissful craziness, of excelling oneself and of strength. The two of them and their twenty male comrades discover that being able to hold a weapon is not enough to be a good shooter. Nor is it enough to be able to walk to move stealthily.
Set out together on this adventure, Helia and Sama begin their three month transformation to become guerilleras. They meet with other women already engaged for several years and fighting a tough feminist battle amongst the Peshmerga but also in their countries’ society.
Between their will for freedom and their disappointments, their desire for rebellion and homesickness, they discover at their own expense that holding a weapon doesn’t always lead you to definite freedom.