Very quickly, deprived of resources, they are forced to leave Ankara and go to Istanbul to live with Aziz’s mother, with their daughter Ezgi whom they aim to send to a private school.
The impossibility of practicing their professions and the social decline that follows have a profound impact on this couple whose dissensions appear: must, to live with dignity, agree to renounce their ideals and compromise with the power in place?
The flaws appear: Dérya is tired of acting in her husband’s plays while he tells her that, without him, she would never have had a good career.
Derya and Aziz are complex characters and the director’s point of view is not Manichean.
This film describes the consequences of the authoritarian decisions of a despotic regime on the life of a couple and a family.
Furthermore, in his interviews, the director says that he could very well have shot his film in Türkiye. However, he indicates from the start of the film that Hamburg “plays the role” of Istanbul while Berlin is Ankara, which gives a universal scope to his subject. This is reinforced by the fact that at no time is there any question of Türkiye or Recep Tayyip Erdogän. Ilker Çatak describes here what could happen in many other countries[…]
