By Alex Deleon

Written and directed by  Öscan Alper, starring Onur Saylak and Sofya Khandamirova.

Some of the haunting faces in a haunting Turkish film

Shown in the Coup de Coeur (From the heart) sectıon out of competition, but nevertheless one of the Big films of the festival, this is an extended poetic meditation on the 1915 Genocide of the Armenians in Turkey. In a wayna followup to Fatih Akin's 1914 "The Cut" but even more daring in that it was made by a Turk resident in Turkey rather than an kverseas Turk in Germany.  Sigificantly it niw is beginnin to look like mentioning theArmenian Genocide in Turkey is no longer the absolte governmentbdanctioned taboo it has been until now. 

The hero of Mr. Alper's film is ARAM an Armenian artist living in Istanbul in 1943 at the height of World War II. Although Turkey is nominally neutral the government definitely favors Hitler. The film opens in his studio where a beautiful young woman is posing for him in the nude. When she leaves he visits the office of an Armenian friend who is the publisher of an opposition magazine.  He has recenly published an article discussing Turkish collusion with Nazi Germany. The publication building is raided by a government backed mob out to lynch "the Dirty Communists".

Aram barely escapes and takes refuge momentarily in a cinema where news footage is being shown of Hitlers triumphs in Europe.   His friend arrives and advises him that it is no longer safe for him to remain in Turkey with the implication that a second Armenian genocide may be in the offing.

The rest of the film traces Aram's escape route all the way across Turkey to the Soviet Georgian border which is closed and heavily guarded.

For the bulk of the film, Aram the city intellectual, is forced to hide out in a remote log house inhabited by a Gruff Russian speaking older man and a pretty young Russian girl from Sotchi across the border, until the spring thaw when there will be a possibility of slipping over the border to safety

Isolated in a magnificent mountain landscape and a primitive forest, taken in as a temporary guest by this primitive living couple, Aram continues to make sketches and write poetry as he despairs more and more of ever escaping. In a series of carefully  inserted flashbacks we see that his entire family was wiped out in the 1915 massacres and he alone escaped by walking over an endless flat plain.

The bulk of the film takes place in the rugged cabin and glorious rain seept landscape with little dialogue and slow visual revelation of the gradual attraction between the girl, Meryem, and Aram which culminates in their physical union when Mikhail, the master if the house is away on a trip for several days. This will lead to severe complication and another flight, this time Aram and the girl who has had enough if rugged life with older Mikhail, when Turkish soldiers raid the house having been informed of the runaway Armenian's presence.  The ensuing chase will end on a little wooden boat with the new lovers trying to elude Turkish soldiers shooting at them from the shore. Did they make it? -- Hard to say as the films goes very slowly whiteout...  to light plaintif  music which, sparingly used, is another poetic aspect of this long slow meditation on the Armenian genocide perpetrated in Turkey in 1915 and its lingering effects thirty years later. 

ALEXFARBA FILM WEBSITE:

http://www.alexfarbafilm.com