Under Every Yard of Sky shows Kurdistan as a place of stunning natural beauty, humor, tradition and love, where the young are raised to dream of freedom and independence. But we also see that it is a land of war, loss and grief, a living cemetery to vanished martyrs.

Iraq’s Kurds have paid a heavy price in their fight for self-determination, oppressed by British colonialists, Iraqi monarchists and Saddam’s Ba’athists alike. Every decade has been marred by genocide or displacement, often both.

However, the 2003 US-led invasion upended Iraq. The Kurds shored up their borders with the rest of the country, creating an island of relative tranquility in the war-ravaged nation. Kurdistan’s immense reserves of fossil fuels began to be tapped for the first time by major oil companies, and gated communities sprouted up like mushrooms. Kurdistan was booming.

Then in 2014, ISIS launched itself into Iraq, overrunning huge swathes of the country. Kurdish soldiers were sent off to hold a front line that stretched over five hundred miles. Just like that, Kurdistan was thrust back into war.