Aller vers le soleil

Ex-architect Yesim Ustaoglu was inspired to make this film after reading newspaper articles about Kurdish villages laid waste in southeastern Turkey. Given the level of censorship she faced, this lyrical, deceptively simple tale about love, loss, and identity (brilliantly shot by Kieslowski's old cameraman Jacek Petrycki) is all the more courageous. The story starts with two outsiders, Mehmet and Berzan, meeting in Istanbul, where both are eking out an existence in the face of police oppression. When Berzan is killed, Mehmet embarks on an epic journey across country to return his body to his home village. Ustaoglu is never didactic. Instead, she shows the bafflement and yearning of the young friends as they struggle to make sense of their predicament.

This movie starts in Istanbul and ends near Northern Iraq. In between, a young Turkish man traverses more than 1,000 KMs, first driving a stolen pickup truck, then riding on a minibus and a train. All along, he is dragging a wooden coffin holding the dead body of a friend.

The early setup in Istanbul develops along the protagonist's relations with a young woman and with a political refugee from the Kurdish southeast who later ends up in the coffin. A story of innocent love is presented between the hero and his girlfriend. As he ends up being tossed across the political and ethnic fault lines in the social mix of Istanbul, she is one of the very few people who choose to stand by him.

I found the story very realistic without being glib about the social life and the political issues it brings to the screen.

Probably the best aspect of the movie is the cinematography. The scenes of Istanbul and south-eastern Turkey are magical. Another aspect that appealed to me is that although the film is obviously political, it does not present the situation in any direct way. The main characters are simple, apolitical characters whose lives become affected by the political events around them. By keeping the story focused on the immediate situation of the main characters, the background politics are all the more powerful because the director does not directly espouse or preach on behalf of any one point of view. It makes the viewer want to learn more about the complex nature of the Kurdish issue in Turkey.

(1999) Journey to the Sun (In Turkish/ Kurdish with English subtitles) POLITICAL DRAMA

Written and directed by Yesim Ustaoglu centering on adult teenager, Berzan (Nazmi Kirik) from Istanbul bonding with someone he was supposed to be hating, Mehmet (Newroz Baz) after saving him from an angry mob. Berzan himself eventually gets himself caught up in the system upon after what was supposedly a harmless bus ride and was ater branded with the dreadful X similar to the Scarlet Letter.

At times the complicated situation serves nothing more but a backdrop to the not so nice looking areas that may or may not be exaggerated.

We as the Turkish audience, were able to see the movie in our theaters by March 2000. The film is about what most of us ignore to see, or ignore to show in Turkey. It has a documentary aspect, the amateur actors and the real location shots increases the honesty and realism in the film.

Without sloganized dialogues or manipulatng plot it is a story of a journey through Turkey's wounds...