Kazım Öz at New York University's Cantor Center

Zer is a movie released in 2017 and directed by

Kazim Öz Kazim Öz (born 1973, Dersim) is a Kurdish film director, scriptwriter and producer. In 1992 he began acting at Teatra Jiyana Nû, while also working on movies. Early life and education Kazim Öz lived in the countryside in the Dersim region ...

. The film is about the experiences of a young Turkish musical student who gets to know his Kurdish grandmother as she comes to New York for treatment.

Plot

Jan is a student in musicology in New York and has a strained relationship with his father. His grandmother comes to New York to receive cancer treatment and Jan often visits her in the hospital. His grandmother sings him the song Zer and becomes captivated by its melody. After his grandmother died and Jan and his father attended the funeral in Turkey, Jan decides to stay and solve the mystery around the song. It leads him to a journey to the land of his ancestors and of what they experienced during the Dersim Massacre. In search of the origins of the song, he gets to know a

Dengbêj Dengbêj is a Kurdish music genre and/or a singer of the music genre Dengbêj. Dengbêjs are singing storytellers. There have been many terms to describe Dengbêjs throughout history, but today Dengbêj is the best known, and also several singing ...

singer and a rebel in the woods.

Production

First it received financing by the Turkish Ministry of Culture, but during the transcurse of the production, the support was withdrawn. The movie was filmed in New York, United States and also in the provinces of Istanbul,

Erzincan Erzincan (; ku, Erzîngan), historically Yerznka ( hy, Երզնկա), is the capital of Erzincan Province in Eastern Turkey. Nearby cities include Erzurum, Sivas, Tunceli, Bingöl, Elazığ, Malatya, Gümüşhane, Bayburt, and Giresun. The ...

Tunceli Tunceli ( ku, Dêrsim) is a city and municipality in eastern Turkey. It is the capital of Tunceli Province, located in the middle of the Eastern Anatolia Region. The city has a Kurdish-majority population and was a site of the Dersim rebellion. ...

, Elazıg in Turkey.

Censorship

The movie received a certificate to be screened in Turkey by the Ministry of Culture in 2014. But in 2017, the Ministry requested scenes on the Dersim Massacre to be removed. The movie premiered at the 36th İstanbul Film Festival in April 2017 in a censored version which included blacked out frames for the duration of the relevant scenes covered with a message that the scenes were deemed inconvenient by the Ministry of Culture. Following, his certificate was annulled. Many movie theaters in Turkey cancelled the screenings, at the end only 11 movie theaters in Turkey showed the film.

Cast

Nik Xhelilaj Kreshnik Xhelilaj (born 5 March 1983) known professionally as Nik Xhelilaj, is an Albanian actor. He began his international career with the movie The Sorrow of Mrs. Schneider, directed by Piro Milkani and Eno Milkani and was the leading actor ...

{{Citation, title=Zer, url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6123206/, access-date=2020-05-17 * Güler Ökten *

Füsun Demirel Füsun Demirel (born 13 June 1958) is a Turkish actress and interpreter. She played in Gülse Birsel Gülse Birsel (née Şener; born 11 March 1971) is a Turkish actress, screenwriter and columnist. She is known for hit sitcom series, Avrupa Y ...

* Haleigh Ciel * Levent Özdilek

References

Turkish drama films Kurdish-language films 2017 films 2010s Turkish-language films