Film

Yara (1998)

Director: Yilmaz Arslan

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Like Arslan's first feature Passages, this fable about loss of cultural identity is harsh, uncompromising and sometimes hard to take. Hülya (Reynaud), a Turkish girl raised in Germany by her divorced father, is taken back to Turkey for what she thinks is a vacation - to find herself dumped on her uncle and effectively imprisoned. The first half details her attempted escape, heading for the German border by any means available and trampling on every Turkish/Islamic tradition she encounters en route. The second, following her inevitable breakdown, shows her sojourn in an appalling mental hospital. Himself an émigré in Germany, Arslan knows whereof he speaks: all the hysteria, neuroses and self-hatred of 'emigrant rage' are here, softened only by the seductive vision of rural Turkey and by serene, surreal dream sequences which get inside Hülya's dysfunctional ego.

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