My mother married my father in 1973 in Küçük Otlukbeli, a small village in eastern Turkey. After their marriage, they emigrated to Berlin. For over 30 years, my mother has not visited her native village. Every year she planned to go there, but always postponed it. In 2011, I accompanied my grandparents to the village with a camera. Küçük Otlukbeli has been abandoned in the meantime. What remains are memories, ruins and nature. My grandmother tells me for the first time about her childhood, her hard life in the village and her wedding.
With the impressions from my parents' homeland, I return to Berlin and welcome them into their everyday lives. We have conversations about their memories of the village, about their life in Germany and about the loss of their Kurdish mother tongue. "Dilim Dönmüyor- My tongue does not turn" is a search for traces into the past and present of my family. In fragments from the lives of three generations, the film tells of the family's painful separation through migration, the disappearance of their Kurdish identity and the search for home.
My mother married my father in 1973 in Küçük Otlukbeli, a small village in eastern Turkey. After their marriage, they emigrated to Berlin. For over 30 years, my mother has not visited her native village. Every year she planned to go there, but always postponed it. In 2011, I accompanied my grandparents to the village with a camera. Küçük Otlukbeli has been abandoned in the meantime. What remains are memories, ruins and nature. My grandmother tells me for the first time about her childhood, her hard life in the village and her wedding.
With the impressions from my parents' homeland, I return to Berlin and welcome them into their everyday lives. We have conversations about their memories of the village, about their life in Germany and about the loss of their Kurdish mother tongue. "Dilim Dönmüyor- My tongue does not turn" is a search for traces into the past and present of my family. In fragments from the lives of three generations, the film tells of the family's painful separation through migration, the disappearance of their Kurdish identity and the search for home.