Yol - the way

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Movie
German title Yol - the way
Original title Yol
Country of production Turkey
original language Turkish
Publishing year 1982
length 114 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Serif Brats
script Yılmaz Güney
production Yılmaz Güney,
Edi Hubschmid
music Zülfü Livaneli ,
Sebastian Argol
camera Erdoğan Engin
cut Yılmaz Güney
occupation
synchronization

Yol - Der Weg (Original title: Yol ) is a Turkish film drama from 1982. Yılmaz Güney wrote the script, but could not direct it himself because he was in prison. This was done by his colleague Serif Gören , who followed Güney's instructions exactly. When Güney escaped from custody, he took the film negatives with him to Switzerland and did the cutting work there. The film is a harsh portrait of Turkey after the 1980 military coup . Yol is the first film in Turkish to contain the word Kurdistan and is therefore considered to be the beginning of Kurdish cinema.

action

It tells the story of some Kurdish prisoners who are going home for a week's imprisonment leave. Seyit Ali learns that his wife Zinê was unfaithful to him. His relatives now demand that he kill them in order to preserve the family honor. At first he is determined to obey them and kill them. When he is supposed to kill her in the snow, he has no heart to kill her - but Zinê freezes to death after his unsuccessful attempt to bring her back and save her.

Mehmet Salih was arrested after trying to commit a robbery with his brother-in-law. He left his brother-in-law, who was wounded by police bullets, on the run. Now his brother-in-law's family wants nothing more to do with him and he is forced to tell his wife Emine the truth. When he tells her the truth, they try to escape by train with their two children. There they are caught very close to having sex in the loo. The rest of the procession, enraged by this immoral, indecent plan, scold them and threaten to kill them. Eventually they are rescued by a train employee and placed in another compartment, where he also verbally abuses them and tells them he wants to hand them over to the police. When he notices her children crying and screaming for their parents, he refrains from doing so. Mehmet Salih and Emine are ultimately shot by a young relative of Emines on the train.

Ömer finds his village destroyed in the middle of the Turkish-Kurdish civil war. The fate of his brother, who is fighting for the Kurds in the civil war, is uncertain upon his arrival. Towards the end of the film Ömer is asked by Turkish soldiers and the rest of the village to identify the bodies of last night's battle, where he denies recognizing anyone among the killed freedom fighters, although his brother is there.

Each of the prisoners must deal with the fact that the world has changed while they were behind bars.

History of origin

The film Yol has a unique history of making. Yilmaz Güney wrote the screenplay for the film while he was in prison for the murder of Sefa Mutlu . The script was very precise for the time, it was described shot by shot, sometimes with instructions for the lighting. Serif Gören directed according to instructions from Yilmaz Güney. And the actors practiced with Güney when they visited him in prison. Since some sentences in the film are spoken in the Kurdish language, which was then forbidden in Turkey, the film had to be partly shot in secret. The film was shot in silence and the sound was added later in Switzerland. After only 5 years of his sentence, he evaded his sentence. He succeeded in doing this while on leave for the Bayram Festival of Sacrifice. He was picked up by a sailing boat on the Turkish coast and traveled to Greece with it. In Greece he boarded a plane to Paris with a forged Swiss identity card. At the same time, his wife Fatos Güney flew with their two children from Istanbul to Zurich. So that Fatos Güney could leave the country, Erika de Hadeln, the director of the Nyon Film Festival, issued a pro forma appointment as a jury member for Fatos Güney. In France, right on the border with Switzerland, the film was then edited together with Elisabeth Waelchli. The film premiered in Cannes in 1982 and won the Palme d'Or.

synchronization

The German dubbing of the film was made in West Berlin in 1982

role actor German speaker
Seyit Ali Tarık Akan Helmut Krauss
Zînê Serif Sezer Cordula Trantow
Mehmet Salih Halil Ergun Sigmar Solbach
Emine Meral Orhonsay Inez Günther
Yusuf Tuncay Akça Martin Semmelrogge

Reviews

“The film, partly secretly shot in Turkey, was completed in exile in Switzerland and captivates with the force of its images, the almost naive simplicity of its allegorical film language and its profound empathy for people, landscapes and milieus. A politically and humanly rousing epic, free from false pathos and without the intention of cheap denunciation. "

- Lexicon of international film

restoration

Donat Keusch and DFK Films released three restored versions of the film Yol in 2017:

  • "YOL" (1982) with KÜRDISTAN insert on a green meadow in the original setting in Turkish-Kurdish with subtitles in de / fr / it / en
  • "YOL - The Full Version" (2017) with KÜRDISTAN inserts on Diyarbakir and Birecek in the original setting in Turkish-Kurdish with subtitles in de / fr / it / en
  • "YOL - The Full Version" (2017) without KÜRDISTAN insert for the evaluation in Turkey in the original setting.

Since Yol would only have been shown at Cannes in 1982 if the film had a duration of less than 110 minutes, Yilmaz Güney cut out the character of Süleyman and scenes with Yusuf. These scenes are included in the original script and now also in the restored version. The version without the Kürdistan insert was made at the request of Turkey, which only wanted to show the film Yol at Cannes 2017 without the Kürdistan insert.

Awards and nominations

Legal situation

It has long been controversial who owns the exploitation rights to "Yol". Even during Güney's lifetime there was a dispute between Yilmaz Güney and Donat Keusch, who represented the Swiss service company Cactus Film involved in the production. In the opening credits of the film, only Güney-Film is named as the producer. When Cactus Film later filed for bankruptcy, various lawsuits were conducted to clarify the legal situation. Most recently, Donat Keusch acquired the exploitation rights contained in the bankruptcy estate of Cactus Film in a contract with the bankruptcy office of Zurich-Aussersihl without consideration. However, it is controversial that such rights existed here at all. Keusch has also registered the questionable contract with the bankruptcy office of Zurich-Aussersihl with the RCA directory (number 2010.2922) of the French CNC and tries to derive property rights from it. However, this does not change the fact that Cactus-Film and at the time of the bankruptcy and thus later Keusch had only limited rights. The original version of the film is de facto distributed by the Güney Foundation in Paris and its partners.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b : "Liberation will be like an earthquake" . In: Der Spiegel . tape 48 , November 29, 1982 ( spiegel.de [accessed August 27, 2018]).
  2. ↑ a b c Christian Jungs : Knatsch about Swiss Cannes winners | NZZ on Sunday . In: NZZ am Sonntag . ( nzz.ch [accessed on August 27, 2018]).
  3. ↑ Yol - The Way. In: synchronkartei.de. German dubbing file , accessed on January 26, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Yol - The Way. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed April 5, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  5. ↑ http://www.films-sans-frontieres.fr/fiche-film/film-yol-439.html