“He hit me 4 occasions from behind. … I fell on the ground,” says a muffled voice off-screen. Then the digital camera pans in on a bed-ridden girl as she drags out the reply to the query of who hit her. “Neptun … my husband.”
Kubra, a former TV anchor who misplaced her mobility and speech after a mind hemorrhage, is likely one of the heroines of “Dying to Divorce,” an 80-minute documentary on gender violence and femicide in Turkey. Directed by Chloe Fairweather and produced by the Turco-British crew of Sinead Kirwan, Ozge Sebzeci and Seda Gokce, the movie is Britain’s official entry within the Academy Awards for finest worldwide characteristic movie. The shortlist is predicted to be introduced on Dec. 21.
The documentary took 5 years to make and at occasions felt impossible to finish, in keeping with Fairweather. It tells the story of Kubra, an up-and-coming journalist referred to by her first title within the movie, and Arzu, a standard homemaker who was married off at 14 to a person 11 years her senior. Each of their instances made headlines in Turkey because of the perpetrators’ repetitive and brutal assaults and the reduced sentence given to Kubra Yelkenci Eker’s husband, Neptun Eker, who was launched after serving one year and 15 days in jail as a result of “good habits” in 2018.
Arzu Boztas, mom of six, left her abusive husband in 2016 when she discovered that he had raped a mentally disabled, underaged neighbor. With the intention to punish her for strolling out, her husband shot her in her legs and arms, sentencing her to a wheelchair for the remainder of her life. As he turned the rifle on her, Arzu begged him to not fireplace at her arms in order that she might handle her youngsters. Unmoved, he stepped on her hand and pulled the set off, aiming at her elbows. He was sentenced to 35 years — 20 years for tried premeditated homicide and 15 years for rape of an underage lady. Arzu has gone by 16 operations however hasn’t recovered using her arms. “Her state of affairs is getting worse, not higher,” Sebzeci, one of many producers, informed Al-Monitor.
Fairweather’s debut characteristic narrates not solely their story however the authorized battle they’ve confronted with the assistance of Ipek Bozkurt, an activist and lawyer who has labored for Turkey’s We Will Cease Femicides Platform, and We Will Cease Femicides Platform member Aysen Ece Kavas.
“We selected these two girls as a result of they’re fighters,” Bozkurt informed Al-Monitor on the cellphone from Scotland, the place she is attending the premiere of the movie. Its UK debut in cinemas coincides with “16 Days of Activism,” the United Nations marketing campaign towards gender violence.
“This isn’t some drama that expects the viewers to weep. After I see girls like Arzu and Kubra, I merely placed on my gloves and I don’t surrender,” she added.
The feisty lawyer, with deeply shadowed eyes and a diamond stud on her nostril, has a knack for robust, deadpan statements. Within the movie, she seems squarely on the digital camera as she says, matter-of-factly, “This nation protects murderers who need to punish their wives, their girlfriends and daughters who need to have various things.” Then she talks concerning the tattered justice system. “When individuals are afraid of their very own lives, their kids’s lives, it’s inconceivable to have justice.”
At first and finish of the documentary, the net Digital Memorial, which the platform updates day by day in commemoration of femicide victims within the nation, ticks off like a sinister taximeter, testifying to the truth that there are a lot of on the market who, not like Arzu and Kubra, misplaced their lives as a result of they requested for a divorce, walked out or just didn’t reply to their husband’s phone call.
Even for these with activists or legal professionals to battle of their nook, the judicial course of is lengthy, taxing and feels rigged towards them. “The Turkish courts are overloaded, so justice is gradual, and it’s uncommon to see the lads — the perpetrators of violence — get the complete sentence they deserve,” Bozkurt stated. “However worse, the courts see these murders as particular person instances quite than a collective, political crime. That’s the reason you must have a holistic strategy that focuses on punishment, prevention, policy-making and monitoring. That’s the reason we’d like the Istanbul Conference.”
In an in a single day determination on March 10, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan introduced that Turkey would withdraw from the landmark Council of Europe conference, the far-reaching accord that holds states chargeable for defending girls from gender-based abuse and violence, persecuting abusers and selling insurance policies to stop harassment. Essential opposition events have pledged to get again into the conference as considered one of their first acts in the event that they win the elections, and ladies’s teams say that the withdrawal has inspired violence towards girls. There have been greater than 160 instances of femicide and 138 suspicious deaths of ladies since March 20 — when Turkey introduced it was leaving the Istanbul Conference — till the top of November, in keeping with the femicide platform.
“The documentary provides a girls’s gaze to femicides. … And it’s the UK’s entry to the Oscars — properly, we didn’t count on that!” stated Sebzeci, a photojournalist who has lined gender points for a decade.
“It deserves to win,” Bozkurt informed Al-Monitor. “‘Dying to Divorce’ addresses a worldwide difficulty by the state of affairs in Turkey — it isn’t solely right here that ladies face harassment and gender-based violence. Femicides are in all places.”
This isn’t the primary time that the story of Turkish girls has made it to the Oscars. In 2015, France nominated “Mustang” — a Turkish-language drama co-written and directed by Deniz Gamze Erguveni — for the Academy Awards’ finest overseas language movie. A co-production of France, Germany and Turkey, the movie informed the story of 5 orphaned sisters as they fought towards incest and compelled marriages in a conservative society.
“Notably after Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Conference, the Turkish girls’s motion turned extra united and extra vocal,” Sebzeci stated. “It has turn into a powerful image for girls’s actions in all places.”
In keeping with a report by Plan Worldwide titled The Safety of Younger Girls and Women within the Center East and Northern Africa, MENA ranks lowest on the World Gender Index, scoring minimally on basic indicators comparable to well being, training, and financial and political participation. Gender-based violence is the most typical violation of rights, with one in three girls in MENA having skilled or being prone to experiencing bodily or sexual abuse of their lifetime. The ratio can be 3:1 in Turkey.
“Dying to Divorce” will likely be proven in Istanbul and Izmir through the Human Rights Movie Competition in December. Earlier this yr, the producers requested the Istanbul Basis for Tradition and Arts to display screen it throughout its movie competition however have been refused on the grounds that the movie was “too politically explosive,” Bozkurt stated.
