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FestivalTourProgram During The Year Free Zone Jr. |
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On the Way To School
Orhan Eskikoyand and Ozgur Dogan The Netherlands, Turkey, 2008, 81 minutes WEBSITE AWARDS and FESTIVALS PRESS QUOTE “What ‘On the Way to School’ does is to bring forth, without any kind of intervention, that which is currently being lived and experienced in the daily life of eastern Turkey.” ~ - Emine Yıldırım, Today's Zaman SYNOPSISA young Turkish teacher named Emre Aydin has been appointed by the government to go teach at a school in a remote and impoverished Kurdish village. He arrives in the village at the beginning of the school year to a few unpleasant surprises. There’s no running water in the village and the students don’t show up for class. On The Way to School follows Aydin during the entire academic year. The camera observes him and his students in a fly-on-the-wall kind of way, and we can see how tough an assignment it is for Aydin to teach there. Many families only speak Kurdish at home, so learning Turkish isn’t only hard for the kids, but it’s also a sensitive matter as far as the strained relations between Kurds and the Turkish state are concerned. Aydin feels like a foreigner in his own country, but he’s determined to accomplish the task at hand. For the most part, he’s a friendly and patient instructor, but when students write Kurdish words in their notebooks, he loses his cool and kicks them all out of class. He then proceeds to grab his cell phone and call home, where his mother lovingly gives him her ear.
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ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL