In 1968, Cemal Yavuz went straight from the high plains of Turkish Kurdistan to Hamburg. For 15 years he worked at a shipyard where he shredded tons of scrap metal daily, dreaming of returning home, extending his stay by one year, then another, and another. Two of his sons eventually joined him in Hamburg. His wife and their other children had to remain in Kurdistan. After sixteen years of separation, it was over. Cemal Yavuz returned home in haste, without claim to any pension benefits. He could not take it anymore. He has been living as a farmer back in his home village ever since.
A rather ordinary story, one might say. For director Yüksel Yuvaz it is the story of his father, his family; it is his story as well. He returns to the family’s Kurdish village to assure himself of his roots. After years, he speaks with his mother about her life, her wishes and hopes. He brings the family to Hamburg for a visit. The Little Istanbul barrack settlement is still standing, but at the shipyard they won’t even let the father see his old workplace. In disbelief, he calls the shipyard owner an ungrateful person. It is as if he had never been there. And if not for the film, nobody would ever know his story.
A film of carefully composed contrasts. Here is the Kurdish landscape, depicted with such intensity that one can practically smell and taste it. There the shipyard, cold, bustling, and loud.
It is not factual occurrences that make MEIN VATER, DER GASTARBEITER (My Father, the Guest Worker) an impressive testament. It is the way Yüksel Yuvaz captures his research in words and images, making evident what it means to belong to that second generation of immigrants who are not at home anywhere. A film of carefully composed contrasts. Here is the Kurdish landscape, depicted with such intensity that one can practically smell and taste it. There the shipyard, cold, bustling, and loud. There are no denunciative intentions in the filming; Yüksel Yuvaz has too much respect for human work and achievement for that. He extracts poetic images from this atmosphere of steel and sparking welders. And with them, a description of a life. “Industrial work,” says the director, “has a strange quality. It leaves no traces, except on bodies. It takes so much strength to build a ship, but they'll say: The shipyard built the ship. The final absurd possibility to save the illusion of their dignity: They will say it is a German ship.” The double otherness of the “guest workers”, very clearly and simply described.
Leaving traces: In this motif, Yüksel Yuvaz recognizes the pattern of his father’s life. All his life he has tried to leave his mark—“the last and surest trace was supposed to be me.” The son did not become a welder after all, but a director. The political fate of his parents, on the other hand, is only hinted at. While the Kurdish villagers go about their work in the fields, mowing the wheat by sickle, a girl fetching a bucket of water, Turkish tanks pass by on the road and a farmstead burns within sight. The viewer only sees this and the faces of the people. The villagers don’t speak in front of the camera; they are cautious. Only then does the magnitude of the threat begin to dawn. Sooner or later, they will have to leave, the director’s mother says: “What are we supposed to do here alone?” In plain terms: A lifetime of work, only to be driven out by the Turkish military. MEIN VATER, DER GASTARBEITER is a quiet, beautiful film, very personal, but told without mawkishness; an affirmation of self, but formulated in such a way as to also draw in others.
Fritz Wolf (1947-2021) was a film and media journalist, lecturer and a long-time member of the jury for the prestigious Grimme Award.
This review originally appeared in: epd Kirche und Rundfunk 100/95, 12.20.1995
