Reha
Erdem
is an award winning Turkish film director and screenwriter; he studied at the Cinema Department of Paris 8 University. He will be introducing his later feature, “Jin”, at the Tribeca Film Festival this week.
What it’s about: “Jin” is something of a Red Riding Hood, a 17-year-old girl determined to
live, aiming to cling to life and discover the world stuck between the
turmoil and combats of two nations. She has chosen to rebel in order to
live and the forest as her home…
What else should audiences know?: “Jin is a young Kurdish guerilla, she has spent all her life living in
the mountains within an armed organization. The film deals with a very
critical subject, the Kurdish matter is politically the most important
social and civil issue in Turkey and the impact has grown within time.
The conflicts between the Kurdish guerrillas and the military forces has
been going on for over 30 years, and within these years there has been
over 30.000 adolescents that have died battling for their social and
cultural rights. We are hoping for this fight to end. But besides the human lost and indemnities, as it is the same for every
battle taken place around the world, those whom get harmed and destroyed
the most are the elements in nature; the animals, the trees, all other
leaving creatures… and they don’t have any way to protect themselves or
even less to express themselves.”
On the challenges: “For one thing it was a challenge to shoot at these locations,
we were working in high mountains and in very deep forests, every day we
had long trajectory in getting there were we couldn’t take the crew
& equipment trucks. Everyone would be carrying something. On another hand we had a very small budget, because of the political
content and criticism we couldn’t receive any local support, nor
foreigner support as a matter of fact. That was a delicate matter.”
What’s next: “I have a new film which we shot last year, it is in post-prodution. It’s a Turkish-French-German coproduction; entitled “Singing Women.”
Indiewire invited Tribeca Film Festival directors to tell us about
their films, including what inspired them, the challenges they faced and
what they’re doing next. We’ll be publishing their responses leading up
to the 2013 festival.
Keep checking HERE every day up to the launch of the festival on April 17 for the latest profiles.
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