“Before Snowfall,” the Tribeca Film Festival 2013 WINNER for Best Cinematography-Narrative, is a story about family honor and loyalty. Siyar is the oldest male in a Kurdish family. His oldest sister, Nermin, leaves their small village in Kurdistan because she does not wish to have an arranged marriage. She flees first to Istanbul, Turkey and then to Europe with her “dishonorable” boyfriend and is now considered a disgrace to her entire family. As her actions are thought to be disrespectful to her elders, she faces severe consequences by her family as a result.
The Director, Hisham Zaman, wanted to make it clear that that Kurdistan is a peaceful, non-violent, geo-cultural region of 40,000,000 people wherein the Kurdish people form a prominent majority population spread out over of over eastern Turkey (Turkish Kurdistan), northern Iraq (Iraqi Kurdistan), northwestern Iran (Iranian Kurdistan) and northern Syria(Western Kurdistan) inhabited mainly by Kurds. Kurdistan roughly encompasses the northwestern Zagros and the eastern Taurus mountain ranges,[15] and covers small portions of Armenia.-Wikipedia.
Zaman also shared that he wanted to tell a fictional story, and “Before Snowfall” is not a story about Kurdish attitudes, but a story about honor, which he stated, “happens everywhere.”