Brother's Keeper

Critically powerful cinema from Turkey: Yusuf and his best friend Memo are students at a boarding school for Kurdish boys, secluded in the mountains of eastern Anatolia. When Memo falls mysteriously ill, Yusuf is forced to overcome the bureaucratic hurdles of the repressive school authorities in order to help his friend. When the adults in charge finally realize the seriousness of Memo's condition and attempt to take him to the hospital, the school has been buried under a sudden, heavy snowfall. With no way out and now desperate for help, teachers and students engage in a game of blame, guilt, hidden secrets come to light as time marches relentlessly on. “By upsetting the order of the school through the unconscious pupil, Karahan reverses the situation. At the moment when the principal and the teachers are dependent on outside help, which is unattainable with their usual means, they themselves become prisoners of the place. Pictures by Türksoy Gölebeyi emphasize the spatial confinement. Body parts, shoulders and backs are repeatedly pushed in front of the camera, forming blurred areas in the images that lie spatially in front of the action. There does not seem to be enough space to avoid these disturbing factors. The teachers, in turn, often appear as if they have been constricted in the framing. The scene in which Yusuf drags his friend across the schoolyard is one of the few long shots in the film. Memo's unconsciousness and Yusuf's commitment to his friend elude the confinement and thus the logic of the location. The fact that the film's images are shot in a standard format [4:3], which is almost unheard of today, adds to the impression of confinement with an association of outdatedness. Karahan's film shows the institution of provincial boarding schools as an outdated, repressive place where young pupils are molded into docile citizens.” (Fabian Tietke, at: taz.de)