Anqa

Helin Çelik – Director’s Statement

ANQA is an intimate portrait of three women, who decide to stand up and speak out despite the threat of death, that they exist. Although the film puts emphasis on the inner lives of the women, the socio-political climate of the era they live in becomes tangible.

The narration subtly ties together the crisis of thought in confrontation with systemic, patriarchal violence and misogyny, thereby perfectly displaying the inextricability of the political and social life from the life of the individual. Taking the daily lives of the women in isolation as a starting point, the film revolves around the themes of life, death and the trauma as the line between them.

It disguises the details of the brutal crimes that happened to them but rather focuses on the present lives of the women in all its complexity and confusion, and their fight for survival to re-claim their existence. By doing so, it consciously decides to take the position of NOT reproducing violence, thus it reconstructs existing narratives and aspires cinematic justice.

ANQA creates a fragile space for the spectator to travel through the inner landscapes of the women, and makes possible the encounter with another person, through seeing their wounds and witnessing their present struggle between life and death, frighteningly close. For this reason, trauma becomes the site not only of one’s own person’s wound but enables a way of sharing, communicating one’s history with another person.