Even if he wouldn’t put it this way himself, Nevzat, the 30-year-old protagonist of this touching portrait from the depths of the Kurdish provinces, was a lifelong prisoner. Walled in between the archaic laws of his family clan and obedience to his father, he has no space left for his own desires or decisions. There’s only jobs he’s not allowed to choose and unwanted obligations. Saving money and leaving the village. Being in love just once. Somehow having a good life after all. The filmmaker Dirk Schäfer seems to have entered Nevzat’s life at the precise moment when his secret desires break free and he starts to throw off cultural ballast. He regularly commutes between Istanbul construction sites and his village. The promise of a metropolis there, the wall between him and his desires at home. On one level “Eine Art Liebe” portrays a man who believes in the right to a personal, self-determined happiness. On a second level a relationship between Nevzat and the director develops very carefully, often indicated only by a look or a gesture. Dirk Schäfer speaks Nevzat’s language, which enables him to enter into a reserved, direct dialogue with Nevzat, respecting the pre-existing limits. The filmmaker’s achievement lies in using his protagonist’s rebellion to open the door to a reality that seems alien and outdated. Nevzat profits from the exchange with the German who acts as a sounding board for his doubts and wishes. At the end he calls him teacher, because one doesn’t address one’s elders by their first name. But a teacher from whom he emancipates himself like he did from his cultural constraints.

Matthias Heeder

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Honorary Mention in the German Competition Documentary Film 2012

“Overtime” is a stylistically idiosyncratic look at the working world of the Turkish-curdish low-wage labourers who, attracted by a booming Istanbul, still stay what they have always been – underdogs: badly educated, no insurance or work protection, subject to the despotism of their bosses and with absolutely no perspective of ever improving their situation. The film translates its protagonists’ attitude to life into a visual language as precarious as their lives. Rough, grainy black and white, a handheld, long focal distance camera, intercut travellings, restless images, always on the run, always moving, accompanied by the terse, well-timed off-screen tales of these people. Brief insights into mentalities shaped by bowing down: to the boss who beats them, the state that doesn’t help, life which takes the loved one away because there’s no money for marrying. Only the rent boy whose work concludes this visual journey through the industrial outskirts of a grey Istanbul seems to revolt against this order. But his experience does not suggest a better life. Only bodies subjugated by work. It’s a bold and depressing picture. And was the Bosporus Bridge, symbol of a prospering, future-oriented Turkey, ever photographed as sadly as in this film?

– Matthias Heeder