ERBIL, Kurdistan region – In Turkey’s conservative Kurdish southeast, 22-year-old Dilan pays with her life for loving a man in a neighboring village.
This is the theme of Kurdish-Belgian film director Bulent Ozturk’s “House with Small Windows,” which won the European Short Film Award at the 70th Venice International Film Festival.
“With this film I hope to shed light on the terrible fate of thousands of girls who have to marry against their will or in the name of honor killings,” says Ozturk, whose own mother was forced to marry against her will.
Co-writer and moviemaker Mizgin Mujde Arslan believes the topic is an important one: Every year, 5,000 women are murdered in so-called “honor killings” around the world. The problem is widespread among Kurds in Turkey and Iraq.
“We need to discuss this problem and that’s why we made a movie about it,” explains Arslan, the daughter of a guerrilla leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
The PKK is known for its emphasis on women’s rights and has a large following among Kurds – despite being outlawed in Turkey and the West.
So-called “honor killings,” where girls deemed to have shamed the family by engaging in a love affair are murdered by family members, remain prevalent in Kurdish society.
“We shot this movie in difficult circumstances in only five days,” Arslan told Rudaw. “We went to Kurdistan to make a documentary about a real story with a real character, but then we decided to make it as a short fiction film. We wrote it, found the locations and local actors and shot the film.”
Originally, the movie was supposed to be about Ozturk’s mother, who was given to another family as a young girl.
“During the scheduled 10 days (for filming) my mother had an emotional breakdown. She couldn’t live through her past again,” accoreding to Ozturk. “It turned out that she was given away when she was only six years old and that she had hidden this information all these years from her close relatives,” Ozturk writes on his website.
Arslan not only co-scripted the film she also acted in it.
“We had not planned it this way. We looked for an actress but unfortunately the (village) women did not accept. Even if they wanted, their husbands or brothers didn't allow them. Bulent asked me to play this role. I didn't have this kind of experience, but I had to play it,” Arslan explains.
The EFA short film initiative is organized by the European Film Academy in co-operation with a series of film festivals throughout Europe. Ozturk’s winning entry will be presented at the 26th European Film Awards Ceremony on December 7 in Berlin.
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