VOICE OF MY FATHER

Voice of My Father is a German, French & Turkish drama in Kurdish and Turkish with English subtitles. An illiterate Kurdish mother Basê (Basê Dogan) and a never at home father, Mustafa, raise two sons in Turkey. Movie shows their life around the year 2009. Mustafa has always worked elsewhere, and they would communicate by mailing audio tapes back and forth.

The younger son Mehmet (Zeynel Dogan) with a pregnant wife comes home to learn about his roots using these audio tapes, if he can find them. The Mom prevents him from finding the tapes since there is nothing nice on the tapes, just blame, regret and repression by the Turks. The oldest son left home, and the Dad just disappeared.

This movie was excellent showing the Mom’s deteriorating mind, her sadness, the son’s frustration, Turkish repression, and the general bleakness of life – it was so sad and bleak and depressing – it was mesmerizing. Nothing is truly explained until the last 2 minutes. The only laughter in the entire movie is the Mom on an audio tape talking to her youngest son when he was about 5. At one point, I unpaused the movie, but it wasn’t even paused, just really, really, slow and did I mention depressing.

This drama is even more depressing and more poignant after the US pulled out of Syria in October 2019 and is now no longer protecting the Kurds from the Turks.  There is one scene in the movie showing the intimidation of this Kurdish family by the Turks.

Movie Details

Director

Orhan Eskikoy, Zeynel Dogan

Writer

Orhan Eskikoy

Actors

Basê Doğan, Gülizar Doğan, Zeynel Dogan

Runtime

1 h 28 min

Release Date

1 November 2012

Genres

Drama, Family

Overview

A haunting sociopolitical drama blending fiction and documentary to elucidate the turbulent history of a Kurdish family. Mehmet (co-director Zeynel Dogan) lives with his pregnant wife in Diyarbakir, eastern Turkey. His father was fatally injured while working in Saudi Arabia and all he has left is an audio tape letter. Now he is to become a father himself, he visits his mother to ask about more of these cassettes but she’s evasive, reluctant to upset Mehmet’s view of his father with the whole dark story.