Im toten Winkel

A German documentary film project in north-eastern Turkey. Simone wants to learn more about Hatice, whose son was abducted a quarter of a century ago. Storytelling to prevent forgetting, rituals to contest disappearance. The lives of the Kurdish people – lives lived in a blind spot – are characterised by violence and resistance to an uncertain existence. Strange incidents soon overshadow the filming as well: turning up alongside interpreter Leyla and directly in front of the camera is the neighbour’s little daughter Melek, with her pretty purple dress and a mysterious gaze that goes right through you. What follows is a subtly framed, coldly brutal political thriller told in three chapters and from multiple perspectives. For it is not only the strategies of sinister organisations and the logic of paranoia that is the focus of this clever and complex cinematic conundrum, but the act of seeing itself – in all its dimensions, from observation to prophecy. The blind spot is in fact trauma, of the transgenerational kind. German-Kurdish director, screenwriter and producer Ayşe Polat stages it to perfection. (Berlinale)