A striking interactive documentary about
an untold story

Big Village is an interactive documentary telling the story of the Kurdish community, now living scattered around the world, and the Peshmerga village Gewredê. Created by Beri Shalmashi - child of Kurdish insurgents - and Dutch interactive documentary maker Lyangelo Vasquez. Unfortunately, a story that doesn’t usually get much attention internationally.

Beri and Lyangelo travelled the world and spoke to the village's former inhabitants. To virtually reconstruct the camp that was continuously bombed until it no longer existed. And to re-create a time and place that now only exists in memory. Their stories shaped the interactive documentary set in an illustrated virtual landscape.

Big Village was released in collaboration with Dutch mediapartner 'de Volkskrant', in both Dutch and English. Within the Netherlands, de Volkskrant shared the interactive documentary with their Dutch audience. The tight-knit Kurdish community spread the 'Big Village'-word globally through their social media network. This eventually led to several appearances of Beri on various Kurdish tv-channels.

On behalf of Lyangelo and Beri, a big shout out to Bas Broertjes (producer), Suzan Hijink (illustrator) and Harm van der Ven (developer) for helping to make this happen.