Paper Puppet Testimony

Overview

Abbas’s experimental documentary, Paper Puppet Testimony, collects the stories of Kurdish women in the Red Prison. Although the prison has been turned into a museum, the histories commemorated there are biased and focus primarily on stories of prisoners belonging to political parties in power. There is no mention of the captivity and torture endured by women prisoners. The political establishment has been unwilling to address and confront the atrocities committed against them. In his video, Abbas resists the erasure of these women’s experiences and reckons with the horrors of the past.