Federal Office of Culture FOC Fonds Régio Films Pro Cinéma Berne

With the support of Federal Office of Culture FOC Fonds Régio Films Pro Cinéma Berne « A history of love deprived of life, just like this young couple of Turkish origin, vic:m of policies from here, of tradi:ons from there. Autopsy of an impasse. A strong film. » RTS, Radio Télévision Suisse SYNOPSIS Nuray, a young girl from a Turkish immigrant family, lives with her parents aEer the marriage arranged by her father with a fundamentalist. She loves Emre, young asylum seeker who is searching his place in the new host society. His future in Switzerland as their relaKonship depend first of all of a residence permit. Nuray could and would ensure their future through the marriage but she must get the divorce first, what seems very complicated. Both they are not very communicaKve. They force their living condiKons but the Kme and the circumstances are working against them. INTERVIEW WITH RONI CAN VESAR What is your background as a filmmaker? It is primarily academic: I’ve studied cinema in several universiKes in Switzerland and these studies have led to a license and a master. At the edge of the Leman is my first feature film. This film is the beginning of my adventure as a filmmaker who wants to tell stories with poetry and musicality, I hope. How would you resume your film? This film talks about a possible love story that becomes impossible beacause of the living condiKons of each of the protagonists: she has been married, actually separated but not yet divorced and locked in the family circle; he is trapped in the waiKng for a permit that would allow him to embark in the new life. This is a love story that tries to be lived. This films also talks about the "others" of Switzerland, people who live their lives on the margins of the society: asylum seekers waiKng for a piece of paper, young immigrant girl, the Anatolian community in all its diversity, with its Zazas, its Kurds, Turks, and its contradicKons acKng as a mirror on what is happening in Turkey between lay and fundamentalist people. It is a contemplaKve film that adopts the perspecKve of the "others", these more or less ordinary people trying to make their own history, realising their most simple desires in an atmosphere of potenKal danger comming from the local extreme right but also from the immigrant extreme right, incarnated by islamists. Why did you choose this topic? Being myself a former asylum seeker, the world of immigrants touches me. This group is oEen reduced to clichés. I wanted to show this social group from inside, in its most ordinary life. NegaKve or posiKve, the look of Swiss on their foreigners exercises in some way a symbolic violence. But we are rarely faced with regard of these strangers on their environment, on themselves. My film tries to capture this look because it is an immigrant, a former asylum seeker who is speaking. This topic had led me to quesKon more universal issues: the links between the feeling of love and the life condiKons of the persons, especially the difficulKes of the evoluKon of such an history, which is also marked by cultural codes. Can love be fully lived in all circumstances, in poverty as in insecurity? Tell us about the character of Emre He is a young asylum seeker who, for poliKcal reasons, had to abandon his studies in Istanbul and hopes to begin a new life in Switzerland. But as says his lawyer, even if we know that torturers do not give cerKficates to prove that one has been tortured, without physical evidence, it will be difficult to obtain asylum. In one room appartment he shares with another asylum seeker, he lives in uncertainty about his future but he hopes to pay his debts that have allowed him to leave the Turkey and to restart his studies in Switzerland. He tries to explore all possibiliKes but finds himself in a vicious circle: as an asylum seeker, he has no valid permit to work or to study, and is condemned to wander as the others. He is reserved and does not communicate with his friends or with his girlfriend, even in crucial moments: he doesn’t reveal his plans to leave the country. He is open minded: coming from a country where girl's virginity is essenKal, he finds not important that Nuray is not virgin but rather disappointed that she has made him believe she was. SomeKmes he is much more open minded than Nuray who has grown up in Switzerland. That shows that it is not the country that makes him the person he is. Nuray, the beloved? She is a girl of the second generaKon of immigrants trapped in a certain communal mentality, even if she dresses like many other young modern women and would probably live as they do. She tries to get rid of fundamentalist husband chosen by her father. She is rebellious but not sufficiently emancipated and equipped to pull through. She embodies all those women who, in the modern age, conKnue to suffer in varying degrees, of pressure pa\erns, archaic tradiKons of their entourage. Her lover is more than love for her, he is also her savior. Paradoxically, she must save him first because he has no residence permit and his situaKon is fragile and uncertain as hers. She wants to live with Emre, a man she have chose herself. Love gives her the courage to oppose the will of her father. She’ve leE her imposed husband and dares appear with Emre, she has escape plans with him but is afraid to break family Kes, reach the point of no return and does not dare to make more liberator steps. She has only one friend who supports her. Her mother seems to be on her side but we can feel that she has not the last word in the family. The mother is oEen seen looking out the window: she lives a confinement, she contemplates life flow out and wants her daughter to live what she would like to live herself. Yalcin, the roommate of Emre? Unlike Emre, he is helpless, defeated, trapped by the passing Kme. Already 33 years old, he can’t risk to try his luck in another country because nobody can guarantee him a residence permit elsewhere. I met an asylum seeker waiKng for a residence permit for 11 years and another who became schizophrenic aEer 7 years of waiKng. The waiKng, the boredom use a man in Kme. The negaKve image of refugees oEen takes over in public space. We rarely speak of their dramas, we neglect the human aspect of the immigraKon issue. Yalcin, for example, couldn’t assist at the funeral of his father; what is happened to him, happens to many of us, at least in the form of fear of such a probability. The ex-­‐husband is a fundamentalist ... He is only a tool of the socio-­‐cultural structure with prevailing patriarchal codes. He represents the symbolic and real father power, omnipresent symbolically but absent on the screen, with everything that he denotes in such a structure. He also represents the current Islamist movement in Anatolia, the latent danger lurking the beloved. He is unable to look anyone in the eye, even Nuray, he takes refuge in his shell of the believer. He is paranoic and internalizes the real or perceived society hosKlity towards him. Unwri\en community rules, his enclosed and shy personality, the fact that he is in a foreign ground for him – in Switzerland – all that makes him show restraint speaking with Nuray but his existence poses a real danger to Nuray, she always watches out when she goes out with Emre. She always scans the environnement to be sure not to being seen. And the young undocumented migrant? This is the other side of the lives of asylum seekers: if your apply for asylum is rejected and you don’t want to leave the country, you stay as an undocumented migrant. He is the most helpless of all but, paradoxically, he is also the most free because he has nothing to lose, he is a free electron. He is young and can try his luck elsewhere regardless of what he leaves behind, unlike Emre leaves not only his beloved but the possibility of a residence permit, or Yalcin who can not throw away the nine years of waiKng. The undocumented can leave and has all to win by doing that. It is his energy, his decisive aftude that takes Emre in the same adventure. Emre and Nuray seem to be made for each other but they do not really get to find themselves. What impedes their happiness? Love can it be fully lived in all circumstances? When you don’t even have the primary condiKons of living, can you give yourself fully to each other? Love can it be true then? Can Nuray really love Emre having other existenKal prioriKes: get a divorce, escape the family straitjacket? Or Emre, whose all life in Switzerland depends on a residence permit? Can we talk about love, if we can’t plan the next future, as Emre? SomeKmes the precarious condiKons make the lovers closer to each other, someKmes these condiKons impeede even to meet, to open to each other. They need so much from each other that everything becomes difficult. Emre’s future in Switzerland depends on Nuray, so he is in a weak posiKon in this relaKonship for which he can’t take a lot of iniKaKves. He sees the boss harassing his girlfriend but seems to accept the explanaKons of Nuray. He internalizes everything and, as it oEen happens, the last straw destroyes any confidence he had in her. What concerns Nuray, for not to lose Emre, she hides her first marriage. She builts all around this secret and her balance seems to hold on that innocent lies. It is a kind a reflex of some people in fragile situaKons. Instead of talking of her arranged marriage, her trying to divorce, she hides everything. The family world in which she has grown up forged this personality of hers. These unsaid things risk to end their relaKonship. Emre is far too reserved to reassure her and recreate a complicity. These characters don’t know how to commmunicate and don’t have much Kme to learn it. Even in the love scene they are under Kme pressure because Nuray has to translate for his father, which is so intruding in their most inKmate sphere of life. They are willing to find themselves but, are they enough equipped for that? Do they have enough courage to get out of their situaKon? No, they are rather reserved, minor characters, what I’ve wanted to highlight at the first scenes of their appearance at home: in the first scene with her parents, Nuray stays long in the blur at the background of her mother and the imposing voice of her father. Emre also comes not in the foreground at first: his roommate Yalcin occupyes the first moments and the first big plans. The characters have difficulKes to get out but sKll appear as actors of their lives, rarely vicKms. Have you chosen not reduce everything to the social condiKons? Of course, the development of an individual history as the common history has a part of environmental determinism but it has also a form of the voluntarism of the individual. Even if this voluntarism is finally forma\ed in an environmental paradigm, at the end of which we found, for example, Nuray as we know her. However the pure reason in the KanKan sense may allow the individual to open up to other acKng ways, to a dialecKcal reason, to be criKcal and not to become the vicKm of the environment and the aestheKcs of thought that dominates it. Interests, personal desires can be triggers of this process: so the Emre desire to live in a be\er society makes him to rebel in his country and finally to emigrate but especially makes him learn not to think like those who run his country. In the same way, the Nuray desire to live as the other young women of her age and especially to live with the man she loves, makes her to break the lifestyle imposed to her. Music is very important in the film and marks the key moments in the lives of the characters. How did you choose it? I am a musician at first and the choice of music reveals personal sensiKviKes. Some pieces belong to a friend, Mikail Aslan, who also plays himself in the film. The other pieces belong to a fabulous guitar virtuoso I have the chance to know, Erkan Ogur, accompanied by Djvan Gasparyan, Armenian duduk virtuoso. I wanted to put oriental music on the images of the Lake Leman, of Lausanne to emphasize the subjecKve look of "others" on their environment. For me, the music is parKcipaKng in this subjecKve point of view of characters, strengthens it, replaces their looks, their feelings. CAST EMRE Murat SUBASI NURAY Derya AYVERDI MIKAIL Mikail ASLAN THE LAWYER Frédéric LANDENBERG THE YOUNG UNDOCUMENTED Firat AYVERDI YALCIN Shems YILMAZ THE MOTHER Hülya SEZER NURAY’S FRIEND
Meltem SHAHINE THE BOSS Unal IRMAK Apo ASLAN FILMMAKERS AND TECHNICAL INFO Director and Screenwriter Roni Can VESAR Country, year of producKon Switzerland, 2014 Form FicKon Running Kme 80 minutes Languages Turque, Français, Zaza, Kurde SubKtle Français, Anglais, Allemand ProducKon Consultant Claudia TUR Assistant director Laurent CUPELIN Prod. assistant and regie Ilmaz R. KAIA, Arnaud GANTENBEIN Director of Photography Roni Can VESAR, Cédric RUSSO, Blaise VILLARS Assistant camera Hugo VELUDO, Blaise VILLARS Gaffer Catherina LOPEZ, Thibaut VIGNALI Ass. gaffer Damien GUBLER, Badra HAIDRA, Giancarlo DOZE Sound Engineers Masaki HATSUI, Björn CORNELIUS Scripte Ufuk EMIROGLU, Laurent CUPELIN Costumes Coralie CHAUVIN Make up Olivia A. BUGNON Decorator CollecKf of Vesar Film Music Mikail ASLAN, Erkan OGUR, Djivan GASPARYAN Editor and sound editor Roni Can VESAR Sound postproducKon Björn CORNELIUS Sound effects ChrisKan BARBEZAT, Yvan LISKA Sound Mixer Philippe MERCIER (Studio Prisme, Lausanne) Visual Effects Alexandre GAUDIANO Color Grading Jean-­‐Marie BELLOTEAU (Immerssion Picture, Paris) Color Grading & Finishing Roni Can VESAR (Vesar Film, Lausanne) SubKtle Vesar Film PRODUCER Vesar Film ProducKon Sàrl CO-­‐PRODUCER RTS Radio Télévision Suisse WITH THE SUPPORT OF Office fédéral de la culture OFC (DFI) Fonds Régio Films Pro Cinéma Berne Migros Vaud CONTACT & DISTRIBUTION Vesar Film ProducKon Rue Saint-­‐Roch 3 CH-­‐1004 Lausanne, SWITZERLAND Tél. : +41 78 683 08 03 info@vesarfilm.com www.vesarfilm.com