Documenting the horrors suffered by the Yazidis at the hands of ISIL, or Daesh, terrorists provides a “positive weapon” to confront the dangers of modern-day genocide.

That’s one of the hopes expressed by the German-Yazidi producer of a new film screened at the UN this week called Háwar – A Cry For Help.

Düzen Tekkal was a journalist and filmmaker who became a human rights activist “overnight” when Daesh invaded the Yazidi villages around Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq in August 2014.

An estimated 5,000 members of the minority community were killed in the following days, while hundreds of thousands were displaced and approximately 3,000 girls and women were forced into sexual slavery.

Matt Wells sat down with Düzen before the screening, and they were joined by Michael Blume who runs a project financed by the German state of Baden-Württemberg which managed to evacuate more than a thousand women and children captured by Daesh terrorists.

Düzen began by outlining the film.

Duration: 5’25”