History was made when the biggest cinema event in Turkey, the Golden Orange Film Festival, included two films in the Kurdish language in its prestigious list of films running for the National Competition. It was a first in the nearly half-a-century history of the awards. Screened at the festival with Turkish subtitles, the inclusion of “İki Dil Bir Bavul” (On the Way to School) and “Min Dit: The Children of Diyarbakır” was a cinematic reflection of the Kurdish  Opening, the Turkish government’s undertaking to include greater cultural rights and freedom for Kurds.

“Hearing people speak Kurdish on screen was a wonderful experience,” says Çiğdem Mater, the executive producer of “Çoğunluk” (Majority), last year’s Best Film and the winner of the Best Director prize at the Golden Oranges in October 2010. Four months later, Turkey’s only independent film festival, !f Istanbul, announced that they would include a section called The Opening in its programme. Serra Ciliv, Co-director of !f Istanbul, says, “We showed a selection of Kurdish films for the first time last year under the heading the Opening, which referred to the government's efforts by the same name to resolve a long-standing, tragic conflict in the mainly Kurdish southeast.”

 ‘A fresh new Turkish cinema’

Perhaps the most famous mainstream film was pop-singer-cum-director Mahsun Kırmızıgül’s magnum opus “Güneşi Gördüm” (I Saw the Sun). The film followed the lives of a big Kurdish family as they were evicted from their villagers during the heated period of the guerrilla war in the southeast, and tried to find their grounds in Istanbul and Norway. While the film was criticised for being exploitative, it was also a first in opening up the tragedies of the last three decades that were never a part of the mainstream media, literature and cinema.

Çiğdem Mater, who is also the Turkey Coordinator of the Armenia-Turkey Cinema Platform, finds the examples from mainstream cinema “in kindred voices with the official ideology, afraid to criticise and raise opposing voices.” For him, these films “pretend to be a part of the Kurdish Initiative, displaying a cinema language that eventually is more dangerous for freedoms. For instance, ‘Güneşi Gördüm’ takes as one of its subplots the important subject of the village evictions, and presents it lightly.”

But there is also the other side of the coin, an independent cinema exemplified by names such as Hüseyin Karabey, Kazım Öz and Özgür Doğan, filmmakers coming from a background of documentary and docu-drama. “These filmmakers are offering a new language, a new point of view that lends a voice to the underdog, to the other, and hence promises a fresh new Turkish cinema,” comments Mater.

‘The power of mutual discussion’

One of these films is “İki Dil Bir Bavul,” a semi-documentary following one year in the life of a hapless teacher in southeast Turkey trying to teach Turkish to little students in a Kurdish village. The film, directed by the documentary directing duo Özgür Doğan and Orhan Eskiköy, is an honest and humorous look at the relationship between the teacher who doesn’t speak Kurdish, and the children who don’t speak Turkish. The film became a surprise hit both in box office and among the critics, and went on to win the Best Newcomer award in the Golden Oranges in 2009.

Another inspiring award-winner “Gitmek” (My Marlon and Brando) featured as its protagonist a Turkish actress who falls in love with a Kurdish man from Northern Iraq. When all hell breaks loose in Iraq, she sets on a journey from Istanbul to Iraq to find the love of her life. The acclaimed documentary filmmaker Hüseyin Karabey directed the real life actors of this real life love story, playing themselves on screen. A truly unique experience on the verge of voyeurism, the film was a standout success in international film festivals, among others in New York and Sarajevo.

While directors, producers and writers set out on a mission to give voices to silenced people, their films were accompanied by publications such as Müjde Arslan’s “Kürt Sineması: Yurtsuzluk, Sınır ve Ölüm” – Kurdish Cinema: No Country, Borders and Death and a rising number of film festivals (such as Diyarbakır Kurdish Film Days). As for !f Istanbul, which is in its second year of selecting Kurdish films, Ciliv says: “The screenings were packed and audiences took every opportunity to interact with the filmmakers. This strengthened our belief in the power of mutual discussion.” Her words perhaps summarise the sentiments for many: “We are motivated by a belief in the power of film to tell very human stories. People need to hear each other, and to get to know one another, to make a lasting peace possible.”