Rönicke met Kizilyaprak at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles, where he was participating in their writer in exile programme. Some months later, she invited him to collaborate with her on a film dealing with questions around the Kurdish situation – something that he has written extensively about, both through journalism and fiction.
The starting point of Facing is Kizilyaprak’s short story
KNOCK...KNOCK...KNOCK..., which is based on his experiences of a Turkish torture house. The story is told from the perspective of its writer from a present day position, depicting a meeting between the storyteller and a character in the story. The film moves between fiction and the reenactment of the author’s own story, and is interspersed with archival footage that gives the story an otherwise unspecified political reality.
There will be a public discussion about the process of making the film on 7 June 2008 at 16.00