Zer

Jan grew up in New York. He studies music. One day his grandmother arrives. Her name is Zarife. She has come for treatment. The two had never met before. Zarife’s last days pass there. On her deathbed she sings a song. She whispers it into Jan’s ear. The song comes from somewhere. Zarife had survived what happened at Dersim in 1938. She kept her identity and her past hidden for years. Jan goes after it. The journey takes him to Anatolia. What was hidden comes out slowly. The ministry asked for the Dersim scenes to be removed. The film was shown at the Istanbul Film Festival with those frames blacked out. A note was placed over the blacked out sections. It went out in only eleven cinemas in Turkey. Nik Xhelilaj and Güler Ökten appear in the hundred and thirteen minute film, a Turkish production Kazım Öz finished in 2017.