Min-Dit – The children of Diyarbakir
Genre: Drama
Murder, sibling relationships, Turkey, Kurds, street children, paramilitaries
The Murderers Are Among Us
This film is a political issue: the first Kurdish film, he was invited to the film festival in Antalya, Turkey. The jury awarded him the special prize. Perhaps because the feature film debut by Miraz Bexar, affected not only by his message, but especially through his impressive workmanship.
The Berlin director tells the story of two children, who must make his way on the street, because their parents were murdered by a paramilitary group. The 10-year-old Kurdish girl Gulistan (Senay Orak) and her younger brother Firat (Muhammad Al) just go with their politically persecuted parents of a wedding back home, stop in uniform than the car. All of a sudden they draw their pistols and shoot at close range – a cool, businesslike and merciless. Let the two older children back, as the baby starts crying in the arms of dead mother.
In Diyarbakir, where many Kurds have fled during the civil war between the army and rebels, the children remain on the individual basis. You can not push through the baby and do not keep the apartment. Only when they land on the road, they meet people with the help they can make a little money – in a gray area of prostitution, black market and trafficking. But then Gulistan meets the murderer of her parents again.
Director Miraz Bexar quite familiar to the appalling tragedy of this story. He tells them surprisingly quiet, seemingly without anger and outrage, simply lets the facts speak, which he has researched in Diyarbakir. All elements of the co-production directed by Fatih Akin film based on true events, although they were eventually linked to a fictional story. And because that in itself is dramatic enough, but leaves it to the director in the most tragic scenes with intimations that go more deeply under the skin – just like the Sozialdramen the Dardenne brothers.
To lay bare the structure of the authoritarian regime satisfy simple means. Approximately a mere cut. We see a political prisoner in the interrogation cell of the military prison. Blindfolded, hands tied, his mouth smeared with blood. The murderer of Gulistan parents comes in, the interrogation continues. But we do not see how it strikes – but the cut on the wife of the murderer who is sleeping peacefully in bed. There is anger about the fact that a murderer and torturer can go home safely to home and live her life takes an affectionate family man that is here summarized in a few seconds. And it is also the sober assessment of a city and a society loses its cohesion, because – unlike in Argentina or Chile – pushed the blame government-imposed terror.
Bexar Miraz was born in 1971 in Ankara. His family emigrated in 1980 after the military coup in Germany. For the film of 2005, he moved from Berlin to Diyarbakir. Quite deliberately, he has his children’s story time is not anchored in the 1990s, although at that time the fighting between Kurdish rebels and the army called the worst victims. Thus his story is a universally understood and the more touching. They can not really put into words. You simply inquiring into the sad eyes of the great amateur actress Senay Orak look.
(Peter Gutting)
Title: Min-Dit – The children of Diyarbakir Country of production: Germany Year of production: 2009 Length: 102 (min) of material: Mitosfilm