Commander Arian

On the front line of the Syrian war, a 30-year-old Kurdish commander leads her female battalion to retake a town held by ISIS and wounds seriously, forcing her to redefine herself and her goals.

While filming Comandante Ariani, Sotorra spent over a year in the Kurdish region of Syria with a battalion of female fighters. It follows the Kurdish women's fight against ISIS and the feminist revolution in the Rojava region of eastern Syria. Sotorra follows its protagonist, thirty-year-old Commander Ariani, who fights in the Women's Defence Unit (YPJ) -an all-female battalion- and whose goal, in addition to defending themselves from Islamist attack, is to bring change in the patriarchal society in which they live.

Subtitles in English

Warning: contains harsh video footage of the reality of war..

Director: Alba Sotorra

Writers: Alba Sotorra, Jesper Osmund

Production: Alba Sotorra, Stefano Strocci

Alba Sotorra (Reus, Catalonia, 1980) is a Gaudí award-winning documentary filmmaker and film producer. Sotorra has filmed in Syria, Iran, Turkey and Qatar, among other countries. Her work focuses on the conflicts of the 21st century, particularly in the Middle East, and deals primarily with themes of freedom and liberation, gender, identity and equality, mainly from a female perspective, but also in a very universal way.