Director: Volkan Girgin

Author: Volkan Girgin

Forged: Ayşe Tufan, Ebru Kara, Nataliya Güven, Sedef Pehlivanoğlu

Operating time: 8mins

Movie festivals value some huge cash – and they also usually battle to interrupt even, not to mention make a revenue. With submission charges usually posing as the one reliable income that many festivals have entry to, that may make granting waivers tough. Sadly, this implies filmmakers who already battle to have their voices heard find yourself even additional marginalised.

Tales informed by artists from low-income backgrounds, opposition teams hit by censorship, or people in nations subjected to worldwide sanctions nonetheless want a platform, although. That’s why Indy Movie Library’s Saturday Matinees sequence has returned for a fourth season.

Over the present run of matinees, IFL has showcased courageous and artistic work from locations the place financial and authorized constraints have prevented the free communication of political and social points.

The ultimate movie in our free-to-view programme comes from Istanbul-based filmmaker Volkan Girgin. Umut [Hope] is a bittersweet quick movie, referring to the lives of three totally different refugees who’ve journeyed to Türkiye.

The primary chapter of the story centres on an older lady (Ayşe Tufan), who’s clutching {a photograph} of her household house as she is transported to hospital for emergency care. By means of a sepia flashback, that is revealled to be the house her household was compelled to flee by Bulgarian troops, through the decades-long ethnic cleaning of Muslims from the nation within the twentieth century.

All through that interval, Muslims had been compelled to desert cultural practices, forbidden from utilizing Islamic cemetaries, and to alter their names to ‘Bulgarian’ ones, or face imprisonment. Choosing on the minority group ramped up because the Japanese Bloc weakened, and the Zhirkov regime leant more and more on ethno-nationalism to prop up its ailing venture. This culminated in 1989’s euphemistically named Nice Tour – the place Bulgaria opened its border with Türkiye, and a few 300,000 individuals left. Apologists declare this was a ‘voluntary’ migration, however the ‘alternative’ right here was clearly seen as “get out, or worse will befall you” – and that is mirrored by the actual fact half of those that fled returned when the regime fell.

With that context, it’s clear why the girl within the ambulance is clinging so desperately to the {photograph} of the house she left a long time earlier than. Within the years since, she might need settled in her new nation somewhat than returning to Bulgaria, however that image and the reminiscences it invokes nonetheless communicate to her of hope: hope that in the future issues would possibly get higher, that in the future she could be allowed to dwell as herself, and be ‘house’ once more. As she undertakes a life-or-death journey to hospital, that hope is all of the stronger and impactful.

A few years after this primary encounter, we lower to a girl (Ebru Kara) sorting via perceived trash in a manufacturing unit line. She is there to fish out items which is not going to match simply into the compactor, however one thing catches her eye for a special cause. By some means, the identical image body has been misplaced and is now on the way in which to be destroyed. However she scoops it up, and takes it house – with a plan to make use of it for her personal. An image of her own residence – which we then be taught is in Syria – together with her household posed in entrance of it, is positioned into the body. Unable to half with the outdated picture, she places that behind the body – additional signifying the continuity between the 2 ladies who’ve treasured this body.

Lastly, on some distant shore, a 3rd lady (Nataliya Güven) comes throughout the identical body. It has washed up on a seashore, amid numerous different private impacts, and the particles of an ill-fated journey by determined refugees to flee Syria. As she picks it up, her daughter asks in Ukrainian what on Earth she would do with it – and she or he says she is going to once more put an image of their very own house in it, whereas hoping that quickly the battle will finish to permit their return.

The story clearly has its coronary heart in the proper place, and its literal framing gadget is a candy, considerate approach of discovering a option to transition from one assortment of unhappy and hopeful emotions to the subsequent. On a sensible stage, it does additionally depart the extra cynical-minded amongst us wishing we may warn this unsuspecting new sufferer to not take this cursed object into her house – as everybody now we have seen who comes into contact with it dies. However you would need to be an actual piece of labor for that to be your principal takeaway from this movie – which has drawn collectively three impactful private histories, to make the necessary level that whereas the political institution would possibly demonise refugees as inhuman sponges, trying to reap the benefits of their host-nations, they’re fleeing from unspeakable horrors – and somewhat than dreaming of having the ability to dwell within the hostile, gray environments of the UK, France, the Netherlands, Germany and so on, they really lengthy to have the ability to safely return ‘house’.

Summing this up, Girgin himself says of his movie, “Immigration and Hope are brothers… All through historical past, human beings had been subjected to compelled migration resulting from battle, catastrophe and starvation. Each compelled migration began with the hope of ‘return’. More often than not it led to frustration or advanced into a brand new settled life. However the ‘eager for the land’ by no means ceased.”

The movie might be out there to view for free in full from 09:00 UK time on Saturday the tenth of February, till the tip of the weekend, through our Saturday Matinees theatre web page. Viewers may also be invited to charge the movie out of 5, to assist decide the winner of this Saturday Matinees season.

Because the movie remains to be attempting to realize entry to different festivals, the web page is password protected. Use the code IFLMATINEE2324 to entry the movie.