Peter Bradshaw 

Hejar

Peter Bradshaw: This charming, unhurried film is an affecting story, intelligently acted
  
  

Hejar (Buyuk Adam, Kucuk Ask)

This charming, unhurried film from Turkish writer-director Handan Ipekci is a gentle study of a crotchety old widower having to look after a little girl. Hejar is Kurdish - her name means "crushed" - and her family has been killed in a brutal police raid on their flat in Turkey.

The old man who lives opposite is Rifat (Sukran Gungor), a retired judge of liberal leanings, yet fiercely patriotic. He takes the child in, refuses to let her speak Kurdish, will not let his Kurdish-speaking maid speak to her in Kurdish either - yet sets out ultimately to find Hejar's family and discover the truth.

It is an affecting story, intelligently acted: a gentle companion piece to a fiercer film about the Kurds in Turkey: Yesim Ustaoglu's Journey to the Sun.

 

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