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Audio Format: Dolby Digital / Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Languages: Turkish Subtitles: English, Chinese Region Code: ALL Year Made: 1999 Running Time: 104
Yesim Ustaoglu's "Journey to the Sun," as bleak as it is beautiful, takes its time to develop, eschewing virtually all exposition, conveying a sense of what it's like to be young and poor but still dare to dream of a happier future in Turkey today. Sensitive, gritty and courageous, this film gathers a power and focus not foreshadowed in its deliberately rambling earlier sequences. Berzan (Nazmi Quirix), a Kurd from the eastern city of Zorduc near the Iraqi border, has been in Istanbul for some time, supporting himself selling music cassettes from a pushcart when he strikes up a friendship with Mehmet (Newroz Baz), who has come to the big city for a better life from the western city of Tire. Soon Mehmet finds work, shelter and a girlfriend, Arzu (Mizgin Kapazan), who works in a laundry. Wrongly arrested during a routine police check on a public bus, Mehmet is released from jail after a week only to discover that his life has been turned upside down. A red X has been painted on his door, he's promptly evicted by his terrified roommates, and he even loses his job. Mehmet is guilty only of having a dark enough complexion to be mistaken for a Kurd. From now on there seems no escape from this mistaken ethnic identity. The way the picture plays out, Mehmet at a certain point in effect takes on Berzan's identity as he embarks on a harrowing mission to Zorduc. By this time director Ustaoglu has made it clear that Turkey is engaged in a relentless destruction of rural Kurdish communities and a campaign of harassment of Kurds when they're forced into the cities in a struggle to survive. "Journey to the Sun" is not easy to watch, but its principals are engaging, and it has a shimmering score, at once plaintive and seductive.
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