
The Poet’s Wife
Die Frau des Dichters
Helke Misselwitz
Competition for the Audience Award 2022
Documentary Film
Germany
2021
94 minutes
Turkish
subtitles: 
English
Credits
Helke Misselwitz
Helke Misselwitz
Ferhat Yunus Topraklar
Yunus Roy Imer
Thomas Plenert
Gudrun Steinbrück
Volkan Ergen
Adam Tusk
Luise Hofmann
Detlef Antonius Schitto
Helke Misselwitz
You feel welcome on Güler Yücel’s terrace. The temperamental artist presents colourful paintings of the life she knows intimately. Yücel lives and paints on the Turkish Datça peninsula. Her paintings are a chronicler’s narrative. They capture the exuberance of a wedding, follow labourers during the olive harvest, show a flock of goats. They also tell of her marriage to Can, a politically persecuted poet now dead.
When Güler Yücel feels too hot, she laughingly hoses herself down. Even her latest works must withstand the water test. We meet an unconventional woman who, though old, explores her surroundings with a beautiful joy of life. Inspired by the conversations and by Yücel’s works, the camera goes on a journey of discovery, resting on other women who confidently look and talk into its lens, like the goat herd about her time in the city, where she felt other-directed. Now she has found herself. Later, at a wedding party, the young bride proudly strides towards her future. Güler Yücel, too, has lived her life and known love. One of her paintings shows Can and her sitting naked in the sun. She remembers her husband, the political battles they fought together.