Artist in Person

Introduced by Dr. Deniz Göktürk (Department of German, UCB)

A striking example of committed political filmmaking by one of Turkey's most important woman directors, Journey to the Sun is a portrait of one space, Istanbul, and of the immigrants, bureaucrats, outcasts, and strugglers who make up its disjointed ethnic realities. Mehmet, newly arrived from western Turkey, gains employment in the city waterworks, using his keen hearing to track the exact location of defective pipes and leaks. He befriends Berzan, a politically committed Kurd who sells music tapes and is the frequent target of police abuse, and a woman who works in the local laundromat. Mistakenly arrested due to his own supposed Kurdish looks, Mehmet finds himself caught, like his friend, in a web of oppression and discrimination. Forced to leave Istanbul, he decides to make a spiritual voyage eastward, a desperate "journey to the sun."