Don't Let Them Shoot the Kite

Baris is five and lives in a women's prison. His mother is inside on a drug conviction and the boy stayed with her. The prison is his whole world; the corridors, the yard, the guards and the ward. Inci arrives as a political prisoner. A teacher, she takes an interest in the boy; she teaches him letters, tells him stories and describes the outside. Baris has not seen the outside. Looking up from the yard he sees a kite, and that becomes the one concrete thing he knows about out there. Tunc Basaran directs and adapted the script from Feride Cicekoglu's 1986 book. Nur Surer plays Inci and Ozan Bilen plays Baris. Fusun Demirel and Guzin Ozipek are in the cast. It is a Turkish production. Feride Cicekoglu was arrested after the coup of 12 September 1980 and spent four years in prison in Ankara; the book rests on that experience. The film won best film, best actress, best screenplay and best cinematography at the 26th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival. It was sent as Turkey's entry for the foreign language award at the 62nd Academy Awards. Most of the prison scenes were shot at the Sultanahmet prison in Istanbul. The matter it treats is a child who has never seen the outside building a world; the film gives the politics only as far as the boy can follow it. The narrative does not ask for pity and does not make the women in the ward all alike. The title and the image of the kite are the only object of hope in the story. The ending is a parting and offers no relief. Its limit is scale; the narrative is small, little happens, and the pace is slow. Who it is for: viewers who like Turkish cinema after the eighties and stories told through a child. Who it is not for: it is sorrowful, slow, and the ending bitter.