Dilveen

Watch Dilveen on YouTube

How an 11 year-old girl escaped after being kidnapped by ISIS.

RUNTIME: 11:57

Dilveen is a Yazidi. Her people have lived in Northern Iraq since it was called Mesopotamia.

For 11 year-old Dilveen, life was good on her family’s farm. She was a normal girl. She played soccer with her friends, went to school and helped her father sell his vegetables in town.

When ISIS invaded the region in the summer of 2014, everything changed. Dilveen witnessed the execution of her father, and became one of thousands of Yazidi girls kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery. She was sold to a 65 year-old man, who planned to take her to Syria for marriage.

Dilveen hatched a daring escape plan that allowed both her and another girl being held captive to flee. She was reunited with her family and now lives in Southern Ontario with her mother, aunts, and siblings. She has just started high school and is learning English. 

Her story is captured in this harrowing short documentary that juxtaposes haunting hand-drawn animated sequences of the past, with glimpses of Dilveen’s new life in Canada. Through her courage and strength, audiences will come to better understand the atrocities the Yazidi community continues to suffer through.