‘Hevêrk/Circle’ On Way to Cannes

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The short movie titled “Hevêrk/the Circle” written and directed by Ruken Tekeş has been invited to 2016 Cannes Court Metrage (Cannes Short Film Corner) to be screened in short movie section of 69th Cannes Film Festival.

Ruken Tekeş who has been invited to Cannes with her first short shot the movie in Hasankeyf, which is estimated to submerge in 2017, with 39 children living in the region who never acted before.

The movie inspired by true events tells racism, religious and language discrimination from children world. The duration of the movie telling the tragedy that a 7-year-old Yezidi Kurdish girl goes through in school environment is 14 minutes and its dialogues are in three languages, which are Kurdish, Turkish, and Arabic.

“Two main reasons for me to shoot this movie are…”

Ruken Tekeş in the press bulletin of the movie says it aims to draw attention to the tragedies that Yezidi Kurds live in Turkey and the region.

“Even though ‘Hevêrk/the Circle’ seems like telling a local story, it in fact narrates the marginalization lived all over the world through the tragedy that a little Yezidi Kurdish girl goes through.

“The Yezidis whose population was around 40,000 only in Turkey until 1915s, had to migrate from their lands and that their official population is not more than 200 in 2016.

“The two main reasons for me to shoot this movie are to show how the discrimination that we still couldn’t make away with in Turkey reflects on children’s world, and draw attention to the tragedies that Yezidi Kurds experience in Turkey and the region. This movie has also been a very important journey that has a very important place in me…”

Who is Ruken Tekeş?

1976-born in Diyarbakır, Ruken Tekeş lived in Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Athens, Vienna, Venedic, Rome, Kiev, San Diego, and Moscow due to her education and studies between the years of 1997-2010.

She worked as human rights expert within the body of the United Nations for many years. In parallel with this, she supported development of human rights movies in Europe as founder of Human Rights Culture Association (Rome), founder and director of International Human Rights Films Festival (Kiev), Venedik Film Festival Human Rights Film Award organization (Venice), 61st Venice Film Festival EUIC Human Rights Award jury member, and co-founder of Cinema & Human Rights Education Program (Venice/London).

She taught human rights based courses at Koç University as academic member for five years after she returned to İstanbul in 2015. She carries on with human rights studies as New Constitution Platform member and Civilian Change Association President.

Tekeş who had to bedfast for a long time because of the accident she had in 2015 wrote a large number of stories and scripts during that period. She has been invited to Cannes Short Film Corner in 2016 with her first short movie that she both wrote and directed, “Hevêrk/the Circle”. (BK/TK)