The Duisburg Film Week, which presents a small selection of exciting documentaries every November, is known for its minutes.

After each premiere, there is a public discussion and notes are taken, so the first, often very demanding, reception is immortalized right away.

About Serpil Turhan's "Köy", which opened the film week last year, the report says: "One is almost tempted to speak of home."

Heimat would be an obvious, but also paradoxical word for a film that is about Kurdistan but was shot in Berlin.

A little later, the minutes follow: "Turhan rejects the concept of homeland." On the other hand, it could be objected that an Alevi soup is served at the beginning of "Köy" (which means something like "village" or "kiez") , called Asure, is sometimes called "Noah's candy."

A soup in which to taste one's own history is a craftable Heimat and works in Berlin-Kreuzberg or in eastern Anatolia.

But it is also a temporary home, for the duration of a meal, for being together in a dining community.

Serpil Turhan prefers to talk about identity instead of homeland.

In 2013 she made a film called "Dilim Dönmüyör - My Tongue Doesn't Turn", it was about the Turkish spoken in her family, "spoken very badly", as the director emphasizes.

Language would be another aspect of home.

Significantly, Serpil Turhan, born in Berlin in 1979, lives alongside German with languages ​​that she describes as “cryptic” in conversation.

Origin and longing landscape

There's something about encryption in there.

She made an appointment for the evening via Skype, at half past eight the children are already in bed, now she can talk a little about “Köy” and her story as a filmmaker in Germany.

She has found three protagonists, each of whom in different ways relates strongly to a Kurdistan from Berlin, which on the one hand stands for concrete origins, but on the other hand also embodies a landscape of longing.

Her grandmother, called Neno, "always spoke from over there".

What was meant were the places from which she emigrated to Germany: the village, but also Istanbul and a holiday apartment on the Mediterranean.

The living places of a Turkish-Kurdish-Alevi family, which also includes Serpil Turhan.

In the film, she talks to her Neno about whether she should return her Turkish passport.

She no longer wants to have anything to do with a country whose president (she deliberately does not pronounce the name, as if she could at least personally withdraw her trust in him) has the opposition imprisoned and the country is increasingly turning into an autocracy.

And oppressed the Kurdish minority.

The most important events from recent years in Turkey are running in the background of “Köy”: the 2017 constitutional referendum, the 2018 presidential election, the campaigns against Kurdish involvement.

How to deal with Turkey?

Serpil Turhan took an intense interest in it: “I was incredibly ambivalent the whole time.

I've gotten a little clearer now.

I feel anger and fear mixed with resistance.

The shooting took three years, I became a mother again, I also had severe crises, I didn't fly to Turkey anymore or only did it again when my grandmother died.

This fear at the limits, that you could get into trouble, sometimes paralyzes you a bit.

But I also got out of this anger a little bit.”