The 3rd European John Templeton Film Prize was awarded to *Journey to the Sun* (*Güneşe yolculuk*) by Yeşim Ustaoğlu (Turkey, Netherlands, Germany, 1999). The award ceremony took place on 13 February 2000 during a church service at the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche. The prize is worth CHF 7,000, funded by the John Templeton Foundation. The jury for the prize consisted of Robin Gurney, Hans Hodel and Karsten Visarius.
Laudatio
Racism and the difficulties of life for the Kurdish people in Turkey is the theme of the film, which has been awarded the 3rd European John Templeton Film prize 1999.
The story of the film concerns Mehmet, a recent arrival in the big city, where he is befriended by Berzan, a Kurd who sells music cassettes in the street. Although from Turkey’s West Coast, Mehmet himself could easily be mistaken for a Kurd due to his darker skin.
One evening, during a routine police check on a bus, Mehmet is unjustly arrested. Released a week later, he is now a marked man. He returns to his lodging only to find a red X painted on his door. His frightened room mates evict him and he loses his job. His future is overshadowed by fear of another red X appearing wherever he lodges. Why should having a darker skin add to his problems? Eventually finding himself in the slums of Istanbul, Mehmet learns more about the harsh realities of life. His loyalty to Berzan eventually forces him to embark on an eastward journey across the country – a journey to the sun.
The film is an example of political cinema, carrying within it the full gamut of emotions embedded in poetic images, while at the same time avoiding ideological clichés. He was shown in competition at the 1999 Berlin Film Festival, where it received the “Blue Angel” award for the best European film on burning contemporary issue, and the award of the Peace Film Jury.
Sermon for the award ceremony
by Hans Werner Dannowski, Hannover
during the 50th International Film festival Berlin
held on Sunday, 13th February 2000 in the Church St Matthew Berlin-Tiergarten
“Fear not, I am the first and the last, I am he that liveth and was dead;
and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen;
and have have the keys of hell and of death.”
Revelation St. John 1, 17-18
Liebe Gemeinde!
Dear Congregation!
“Fear not!” No other expression occurs more frequently in the Bible than this one. From the angel’s words to the shepherds in the fields in the night when Jesus was born to the words of th resurrected Lord, from Jesus’ exhortation to his disciples in the midst of the raging storm on the boat to the sceneries of the Last Judgement! Again and again: “Fear not!” It seems to be in every human being: deep down – he is afraid. Sooner or later, every one of us fears. People who are fearless appear inhuman to me. I guess, deep down inside – in certain situations – we all wait for somebody who tells us: “Fear not!”
Now – during the 50th International Filmfestival in Berlin – another idea occurs to me looking at it from this aspect. Films often tell stories full of fear. We try to discover the depths and limits of our fear. From “Titanic” to “The Silence of the Lambs” or – to talk about Berlin award-winners – from Askoldov’s “Commissar” to Walter Salles’ “Central do Brasil”: there are always situations where you hold back your breath – wondering what will happen, how the situation will resolve. The film “Journey to the Sun” by Yesim Ustaoglu – who is going to receive the Templeton Film Award – is as well – among much more – a story of fear. In a masterly manner constructed, fear keeps creeping unavoidably into the heart. From the first meeting of Mehmet and Berzan when going on rampage with other football hooligans. The the military raid in the bus, Mehmet’s arrest, his torture, Berzan’s participation in a protest demonstration of the Kurds and his death. You start to know what it means to live in a country where – for certain people and in certain regions – governs a martial law. It is fear that governs such a country.
But what is fear? I think, fear is the sudden experience of strangeness in life. All of a sudden, there are walls built up between me and the others, between me and my environment, between me and life itself. It is not only the feeling that you are – apparently – not loved any longer. It is much more the fact that I am prevented from loving, from adapting myself, from belonging to the whole, is what makes up my depth of fear. Life goes past in this great city Istanbul, between harbours and houses, between sea and hills, a city full of people and full of motion. For some time I am part of it. I am a human among other humans, I am part of that incessant motion that starts somewhere and has a goal somewhere. Suddenly, the ground gives in. Suddenly, I am haunted, end up in a prison – innocently – like Mehmet, just because my skin is probably darker than the skin of the others and I could therefore be of Kurd origins. Suddenly, I lose my job, my flat, find red crosses painted on my door that declare me a fair game. “Odd Man Out” – another famous film title. Fear is the reaction to the threatening loss of my world that goes hand in hand with the loss of my self. What is left is the question whether this fear ends in depressions that finally identifies with this loss. Or whether it leads to mourning that realizes this loss and that suffers – suffers a lot. But that slowly, but finally, is able to overcome the stories of death with stories of life.
“Fear not!” It is the countermovement that counts, says the voice of the enhanced Christ who John sees in his vision on the island Patmos. A countermovement against the loss of the world and against the loss of oneself and thus against fear – and it is already under way. It reaches far, this countermovement, it goes through space and time. It has a point of concentration on the story of the man who is the focal point of the Christian belief. With this “Fear not!” on his lips, Jesus of Nazareth went through our world. He told it to the sick, to the sad, to the dying and to the sinners. And he did not just say it, but he also let them feel and experience its meaning: that there is no need to fear.
“In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”
He died thus and it seems that for some moments he was entirely alone as well. No, you just cannot put away the stories of death, otherwise you repress all memory of the reality of world experience.
But to see the stories of death mingled, lighted up with the stories of life as Jesus’ resurrection says: that is what it is all about. “I am he that liveth and was dead, and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen, and have the keys of hell and of death.” To get hold of the keys of death in the visions of life – that is the way that is declared by the voice of the enhanced Christ. And that is what gives Yesim Ustaoglu’s film its human quality, the fact that the “Journey to the Sun” is not only a story of fear and death. No, it is also conveys in words and images the other experience, this “Fear not!”
Let us have a closer look at this countermovement in this film that is awarded with the Templeton Film Award today. The countermovement starts in a small and hidden manner. It begins with the mission of what might hurt the other’s feelings. It begins with the attentiveness for the face and the cloths, for the wishes and wounds that the other has or wears. The countermovement against fear begins with affection and leads to love. It is love that shy and grows but slowly. Like the love between Mehmet and the washerwoman Arzu who is physically so small but spiritually so great. Like the lobe between the Turk Mehmet from the Western province and the Kurd Berzan from the Eastern province.
Love is the expansion and the enlargement of our own world experience to other perspectives. Love is the way to another always enlarging horizon which is nevertheless never to be reached completely. To hold to love is the defence of one’s self, of one’s own enlarged horizon against the destruction that comes over me in strangeness. The strangeness that teaches me to fear. Love is strong, maybe even stronger than death, says the Bible. Thus, Berzan’s death is not the end for Mehmet. Thus, Mehmet sets out with his dead friend in his coffin to take him to his home near the Iraqi border, to bury him there. What an odyssey: the journey with the coffin in a stolen lorry, in the bus, on the train, with a horse and carriage. A “Journey to the Sun?”
The human’s identity is the longing, a psychoanalyst said. If a human is really a human, his home is in the longing for a world in which the stories of life triumph over the stories of death. A longing that is the heart and the substance of all religions. A longing that has to be nourished and taken over and lived again and again. That has to and can be accepted and practised – as in this “Fear not!”. Here speaks the first and the last and the living. Here, the horizon is opened up that the last wisdom of life are not the stories of persecution, torture and fear. The one who is really alive is on his way for this last wisdom. And especially the little things are important in this way. The little but actually great courage. As when the foreign soldier passes the endangered Mehmet off as his friends at the control. Or as when the old woman scolds the bus driver who wants to deny Mehmet and the coffin his going with the bus. “This is un-Islamic”, says the old woman and when the coffin is finally on the bus, Mehmet and the old woman wink at each other.
Thus, Mehmet’s journey with Berzan’s coffin to his home village is indeed a “Journey to the Sun”. Fiery red, it stands over the country when Mehmet – face to the minaret – pulls the coffin into the artificial lake that has eaten up Berzan’s village. W are all on our way with a longing for a world where the stories of love and life triumph. The world that Christ talks about, for which he died and in which he resurrected. Stories of fear – most films we see on this film festival in Berlin are stories of fear, that is true! But sometimes they are as well stories of hope and comfort – like “Journey to the Sun!” Comforting visions of a world where this expression goes above everything else: “Fear not!”
Amen