[Marxism] Fratricide

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Available in home video since February 2007, 
Yilmaz Arslan?s 2005 ?Fratricide? is a 
unrelentingly grim and pessimistic study of 
feuding Kurd and Turkish youth in the streets of 
some unnamed German city. Despite an ostensibly 
political theme, it is much more about more 
eternal themes such as the need for absolution 
and intimacy in a heartless world. Its most 
obvious antecedents are the Brazilian film 
?Pixote? and Buñuel?s ?Los Olvidados.? In all of 
these films, feral youth bind with each other in 
a largely futile effort to remain human.

In the opening scene of ?Fratricide,? we find 
ourselves in the desolate and remote hillsides of 
Eastern Anatolia. A mailman has come to deliver a 
letter to Azad, a Kurdish teenager. His brother 
Semo, a pimp living in Germany, has sent him 
money to escape the desperate poverty that makes 
life impossible for an oppressed people. When the 
mailman asks where Azad may be found, an old 
woman tells him to drive until he sees a fig 
tree. Then he must take a right and look for the 
third yew tree. There Azad will be found.

When we see Azad again, he is living in a hostel 
for refugee youth. The counselors have brought in 
an eleven year Kurdish boy named Ibrahim 
(nicknamed Ibo) to share the room with him. In a 
flashback, we learn that Ibo?s parents have been 
killed by the Turkish army. The two youth, 
starved for family ties and homesick, bond to 
each other immediately. Azad, who scrapes out a 
living as a barber in the men?s room of a 
Kurdish-owned restaurant, makes Ibo his 
assistant?his job is to hold up a mirror.

full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2007/04/07/fratricide/


________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism