Onur Saylak, a Turkish director, participates in the KVIFF Competition with a film about the current issue of refugee smuggling from the Middle East. The film Daha tells a story of a fourteen-year old boy Gaza, who has been involved by his father in the refugee “business”.
The film is an adaptation of a 2013 novel. However, given the constant transformations of the refugee crisis, certain modifications were necessary in adapting the novel to the script. “We were on the verge of the refugee crisis already when the book was written; it had not yet reached such a large scope, but it was there, you could see it from your windows, and it was about time to reflect the reality. On the other hand, this is an ever-changing issue and therefore requires updating from time to time” comments Hakan Günday, the author of the novel.
The actor Hayat Van Eck, who portrays the main character, the boy Gaza, also attends the Festival. The boy’s personality is portrayed in psychological detail. The writer Günday explains Gaza’s character as follows: “Gaza is a boy who strives to get rid of the mask of a monster, to fight against the world by posing the universal children’s question “Why?”.
While there is no happy ending, Günday sees hope surrounding the whole cinematographic work: “Indeed, there is hope in telling a hopeless story and revealing the issue to the widest possible audience. I also can see hope in every person embarking a boat and heading to a completely unknown country. Nonetheless, the story is about false hope, too, represented in the film by a false life jacket.”
