Let the kite fly

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Movie
Original title Uçurtmayı Vurmasınlar
Country of production Turkey
original language Turkish
Publishing year 1989
length 100 minutes
Rod
Director Tunç Başaran
script Feride Çiçekoğlu
production Jale Basaran , Tunç Başaran
music Özkan Turgay
camera Erdal Kahraman
occupation

Let the kite fly is a Turkish film from 1989. It depicts everyday life in a women's prison in the 1980s from the perspective of a child.

background

After a domestic political crisis , the Turkish military staged a coup in 1980 on the grounds that it had to defend the republic. It was the third coup in the history of the Turkish Republic, after 1960 and 1971. The coup was followed by a large wave of trials and arrests.

action

In the first scenes of the film you can see İnci (Nur Sürer), a young woman walking through the snowy streets of Ankara . She buys a bag of raisins from a grocery store . When she sees a group of children playing, she gives them a handful of them. She continues and reaches a cliff that gives a view of the entire city. İnci remembers her time in prison and thinks in particular of Barış (Ozan Bilen), a preschool boy who lives there with his mother Fatma. Barış's father was once exposed as a drug dealer , but Fatma covered him up and was imprisoned in his place. The father obviously no longer cares about his family. Fatma seems overwhelmed by this situation, so İnci becomes a substitute mother for Barış. She plays with him and explains the world to him.

Barış sees a "bird" in the sky and calls İnci. She explains to him that this was a kite and that children fly such kites in the open air. She promises him that one day, when both of them live in freedom, she will fly a kite with him.

The film depicts life in a Turkish women's prison in the following scenes. The inmates are detained for various reasons, some of them for political reasons. Everyday life includes disputes about food, jealousy and slaps, but also a great deal of solidarity. The young women in particular love Barış, who does not understand many things and keeps asking innocent questions about what a " coyunist " is.

İnci is eventually released and leaves prison one morning. The inmates do not have the heart to wake Barış so that he cannot say goodbye to İnci. He misses her very much and is disappointed that she just left. Filiz, another prisoner, consoles him with the words that İnci may return as a dragon one day. At the end of the film, Barış sees a kite in the sky again and is sure that it comes from İnci. He calls Filiz and the other prisoners, who also interpret the dragon as a sign. The prison commandant tries to shoot the dragon down, but to the delight of the women he does not succeed. The film ends with pictures of İnci, Barış, the confident faces of the inmates, underlaid with a dialogue between Barış and İnci from the first scenes: Niye uçmuyor İnci? - Uçar bir gün ("Why doesn't it fly, İnci? - One day it will fly"). The final shot shows a sky full of kites.

Awards

At the Antalya Altın Portakal Film Festivali ("Antalya Film Festival of the Golden Orange"), the most important film festival in Turkey, Let the Dragon Fly received four top awards in 1989: best film, best actress (Nur Sürer), best screenplay (Feride Çiçekoğlu) and best camera (Erdal Kahraman). Let the kite fly was also the Turkish entry for the 1990 Academy Awards in the category "Best Foreign Language [= Non-English Language] Film", but was not shortlisted.

Web links