Jalal Mullah Najibi Betooshi was born in 1930 in Bafriqandi neighborhood of Koya. He completed his primary school in Koya. Middle school in Koya and Kirkuk. For the first time, he fought alongside several other Kurds against some Turkmen in Kirkuk over Kurdistan. According to him, the Turkmen beat them well.
In 1945 he became a communist. In 1946, he became a member of the Communist Iraqi National Liberation Party.
He was arrested seven times during the monarchy for communism. He was arrested in 1957 while in Baquba. His father came to him from Koya to tell him not to confess.
In late 1957, he moved to Baghdad, where he opened a photography shop on Amin Street, which still exists. In the same year, they sent Hazhar Mukriani to work for him. In his memoirs of Cheshti Majeur, Hazhar speaks well of Jalal Betooshi in several places.
In 1959, he was sent by the party to East Germany to study. He was the first person from Koya, so far known, to set foot on the country. When he arrived, there were ten Iraqis, including Kurds and Arabs, as well as Kurds from other parts Kurdistan.
After studying languages, he was admitted to the Department of Photography at the Higher Institute of Arts. He graduated in 1962 and was immediately employed in the political reporting department of German television. While working, he came up with the idea of making a short film about the situation in Iraq, called Duty. The film tells the story of the Peshmergas of the September Revolution, how Kurds and Arabs, especially Arab communists, participated in the revolution. How Kurdish Peshmergas help one of the Arabs to bring relatives from Baghdad. The film was shot in the mountains of southern Germany near the Czech border, starring Kamal Jamil Saydo, a Syrian Kurd. This was in 1968.
His second film was on the occasion of the 1969 World Children's Festival in Leipzig. Although he participated in the festival as an employee of German television, but because the Iraqi films were not useful, Jalal Betoushi's film, Friendship, was included in the list of Iraqi films and received an award. The award was received by Yousef Ani.
In 1970 he returned to Iraq. He was employed in the film unit of the General Agency for Radio and Television, and also taught journalism at the College of Arts, Baghdad University. In 1976, after the collapse of the September Revolution, he returned to Germany, but this time to West Germany.
He married Christa in 1966 and has a daughter, Joanna. [1]