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EVER SINCE, I HAVE BEEN FLYING
O GÜNDÜR BU GÜNDÜR UÇUYORUM
Switzerland | 2023 | 19 min
Vakıf, a sixty-year-old Kurd who grew up in a nomadic tribe on the mountains of south-eastern Turkey, remembers moments from his youth that marked his life. He goes back on his idyllic childhood with his mother, his first love found in a cotton field and lost in the woods, and the abuse suffered from the police in a cold, dark place. In Aylin Gökmen’s suggestive short film, faces, landscapes, and words blend and give life to the heart-rending account of a man whose memories over time get impregnated with an ancestral value; their very persistence helped him endure the harshest moments of imprisonment. A tender cotton flower detaching from its stem and a kiss that tastes like pomegranate accompany the story towards an open, liberating ending in which darkness and the sorrow for all that was lost open up with lightness onto a new light. (a.s.)