Sultan
the woman teacher from the Bosphorus and other school stories
Foto: Anne Koch
The documentary film by Anne Koch and her team narrates success stories of migration. However the film is not simply a paean of unadulterated jubilation, for it shows all the different contradictions Turkish people have to absorb in order to succeed in German society.
For example Sultan D. She was born in 1965 in Büyükçekmece near Istanbul. When she was 10 she left Turkey with her family for Essen, where her parents worked in a factory. She attended the secondary school in Karnap, returned to Turkey to live with her grandparents, came back again to Germany to do her A-levels, and then studied German and social sciences at the University of Essen. Today she teaches German in an Essen comprehensive school.
A further protagonist in the film is Savas K. In 2005, at the age of 15, he moved with his mother and younger brother from Adıyaman to Essen to join his father, who had already been working for eight years in a business that made kebabs. The love of Savas’ life is music. He plays the saz very well, and has often performed to audiences on it. The documentary film traces the passages in their lives, their stopping points along the way, and their cultural roots in Germany. In 2010 the film will be shown in the Ruhr Metropolis and Turkey.
Project:
Sigrid Becker, Unesco-Schule Essen (D) / Anne Koch, Filmerin (D)
Partner from:
Adıyaman (TR) / Büyükçekmece (TR) / Elaziğ (TR) / Essen (D) / Gelsenkirchen (D)