Our Story

We have been working together for 10 years. We have made 4 short documentaries and one feature length. Its name is ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL. It received awards both nationally and internationally. It had a big success in the box office.

In all these films, we are interested more about the impact of how big political issues affect ordinary people. I think small stories about ordinary people makes the big picture clearer.

This story is a drama about a Kurdish and Alevi family. It takes place in eastern part of Turkey. This family has four members. But two of them are absent. The family was torn apart after the Maras Massacre in 1978 where more than one hundred Kurdish Alevi people was killed in an organized fight. After the massacre, the father couldn't find a job because of his Kurdish-Alevi identity. Therefore he went to Saudi Arabia to make money for his family. And the elder son, Hasan, was engaged in the Kurdish guerilla movement when he was young. When the father was abroad, he communicated with his family through audiotapes instead of letters, because his family was illiterate

The film starts in the present time with the younger son Zeynel. Since he expects a baby, he becomes obsessed with discovering more about his father. He only has one of those audiotapes. He listens to this one all the time. He remembers that his mother has more tapes. He decides to go to visit his mother in Elbistan. He wants to find more audio tapes and discover more about his father and their family past.

On the other hand, Mother Base who lives alone in Elbistan, is obsessed with her elder son Hasan who doesn't contact with her for a long time. She always listens to her husband's and her child's voice, because she wants get rid of her feeling of loneliness.

Although Zeynel insists that his mother  comes with him to Diyarbak?r, she wants to stay because she thinks Hasan will come back one day. But also Zeynel stays with her in Elbistan since he discovers more about his family and the region. 

This story follows our previous film ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL in two ways. That film was about a young Turkish teacher and his Kurdish students who don't speak Turkish. Zeynel and Hasan are like the adults of those children. And a second similarity is the style. Our first film was a documentary but it played with the borders of documentary and fiction. VOMF is a fiction film based on a true story. We will use elements of documentary filmmaking. We'll use amateur actors and real locations.


The Impact

In order to underline why we are making this film, two words immediately come to the foreground: "empathy" and "collective memory". Walter Benjamin, in his article "The Storyteller", argues that story is a means to transmit experience. By sharing experiences, a society or a nation is created. That is why stories are important: they allow for empathy between people and lead the way for them to relate to the differences within the society. Unfortunately throughout the history of the Turkish Republic there has been a conflict with regard to differences in co-existing. We believe that the conflict can be overcome by appropriating stories that derive directly from experience and produce works that deal with personal/collective memory. Cinema is one of the most effective ways to do precisely that.

What kind of an experience will Voice of My Father convey? We aim at making the bigger picture clear by looking at small situations and incidents. That the story encompasses a wide territory is crucial. This is not to say ideologically the film is ambiguous or inconsistent. We think the director's choosing to expose different stances rather than overtly taking a stance is also an ideological position. Issues of representation will thus be minimized.


What We Need & What You Get

We need 50.000 $ for production (equipment rental). Total budget of the film is 650.000 $. 550.000 $ is secured by Turkish Ministry of Culture, Peri?an Film, Riva Film, Hamburg Film Fund and Melodika. The project has got 2 awards in Meetings on the Bridge in Istanbul Film Festival. We have applied World Cinema Fund for 50.000 $. 

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zgr Do?an
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