User reviews

The movie is very natural and very touching. This is a lesson for everyone to see the real life not fantasy and not worthless, meaningless beliefs. It objectively shows the language problem in east side, how teachers try to do their job in very tough conditions, how children survive in touch village life. I felt like I was at school watching the moves of people. I once had been in east side of Turkey and this is the real life there. The lead role is the teacher Emre Aydin and he is very good. He also represents a man from west village side of Turkey, Denizli. I did not get bored even a minute, highly recommend you to watch it.

This is more than just a film, this is the most clear and to-the point story about the very essence of Kurdish question in Turkey, state not recognizing the language of its 10 million citizens, and Kurdish children are forced to learn a foreign language first, so that they can learn how to read and write. The teacher comes from the west of Turkey, does not speak a word of Kurdish and tries hard to communicate with children. He does not have a preparation of any education in teaching Turkish as a foreign language, he just keeps improvising. It should be seen by everybody in Turkey, who wonder why Kurds keep demanding education in native language.

I can hardly keep myself not to say "best Turkish FILM ever"... This is a graphically decent film and there's almost no artificial element in it. But above all, due to its direct and minimal approach, the film is making the very core of the South-Eastern Anatolia problem visible, namely "lack of communication". Eastern and Western parts of the country don't know their native languages and they simply cannot communicate. (Film is also making clear which side oblige to learn the other's language.) Another very important point about the documentary in my opinion is its being a test film for the audience. Because it is hard to believe that any "human being" has difficulty to enter in this film and feel belong with while watching it, since childhood is a universal drama in itself, and everyone once was a child himself/herself.

The idea was good but the film did not deal or show well known problems deeply. It just mentions and by-passes every important issue. Moreover, the director does not show us the characters in detail, not even the teacher. There is only one scene with snow in the entire film, but it is too little for the harsh winters of south-east of Turkey. There are some wonderful photographic scenes and views, but the film could be much better if it shows us the people and problems with more detail. It just shows us the communication problems of a Turkish teacher with the Kurdish students. (This is not a spoiler as it also writes in the first sentence of the Storyline: One year in the life of a Turkish teacher, teaching the Turkish language to Kurdish children in a remote village in Turkey) So there is nothing more to say about this film.

Released in 2009, İKİ DİL BİR BAVUL is a low-key documentary that nonetheless makes some important points about the shortcomings of the Turkish education system. Ever since Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's time, public school policy has been dictated by the Ministry of Education (Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı), which had consciously reinforced the one-nation ideology by insisting that all classes should be delivered in Turkish. This might work in the majority of schools, but falls flat in the mainly Kurdish-speaking east of the country.

Orhan Eskiköy and Özgür Doğan's film explains why. An idealistic young educator Emre comes from Denizli in the west of Turkey to the village of Demirci in the east. This is a predominantly rural community whose inhabitants eke out an existence in an inhospitable landscape by tending sheep or growing wheat. They live a very self- contained life under primitive conditions; most of the mud-brick houses lack running water, and the women mostly use local produce to create their meals. Few of them can either read or write; hitherto they have had very little need to.

Entering this community and trying to teach the learners represents a difficult, if not impossible task. The children seldom actually come to school; and when Emre encourages them to do so, he finds it almost impossible to communicate with them. They know very little Turkish, having only heard a few words on television; in turn, Emre speaks no Kurdish. Hence they are all imprisoned by their respective languages. The children might repeat the familiar phrase "Ne Mutlu Türküm Diyene" (Happy is he who is a Turk), but they have no understanding of what it means. On the celebrations for Children's Day (23 April), a holiday instituted by Atatürk both to reward children and remind them of the importance of Republican values, the children play games and mouth the phrases they are supposed to do, but the significance of the occasion eludes them. Try as he might, Emre finds that progress in class is slow, often impossible.

Having said that, he is not without his faults. There is little indication of his being prepared to meet the children halfway and learn some Kurdish during his time at the school; and some of his pedagogical methods leave a lot to be desired. Merely shouting at the children and/or intimidating them by making them repeat phrases over and over again is hardly conductive to creating a good learning environment. On the other hand he is a new teacher with little grasp of effective classroom technique, so perhaps we can exonerate him.

The documentary takes place over a year, from September to June. The directors make much of the changing landscapes from the hot sun of late summer to autumn colors, a harsh winter with snow whipping across the barren landscape, and the onset of spring with a duck leading her ducklings across the farm. They emphasize the unchanging nature of life in Demirci, whose citizens pursue a life that remains immune from any of the major urban and social developments taking place in the west of the country. In this kind of situation, it's hardly likely that anyone would respect the Ministry's desire for a Turkish-only school.

Since the film was made, the government apparently made some moves towards a more multicultural education policy by permitting some lessons to be given in Kurdish. In light of current events, however, where renewed conflicts have broken out in the east of the country between the security forces and the local people, we might wonder whether such initiatives have any real chance of taking root, or whether the east will remain the cultural and educational backwater as represented in this film.