Volkan Ergen sets an impressionistic, jump cut journey to the words of Turkish author and editor Pınar Deniz’s poem about her existence within a society in which disability is still viewed without compassion and as something to be jeered at and ridiculed.
Expanding on the lyrical verse of her poem, Deniz further discusses the experience of living with cerebral palsy in Turkey:
“Being ‘different’ in my country usually means, being exposed to; stared at jauntily, pointed with a finger, talked about like you aren’t there; that is, being emotionally harassed.
In my country, most of the handicapped people are kept hidden by their families. Being handicapped, mostly perceived as something “bad”. We’re associated with concepts like ‘impotence’ or ‘may God forbid’. You can’t see a lot of handicapped people on the streets because, here, there is a lot of physical obstacles around as well, once a handicap goes outside.
In my country, it is possible to think about hundreds of suggestions, solutions, hundreds of answers to hundreds of unsolved problems. But in Türkiye, the biggest obstacle of all, is the social alienation.
I dream of the streets of my country, where thousands of people with CP, out on the streets, freely being there. And I’d like to dedicate this movie to all people with CP, showing the courage of being outside, in-spite of every other thing.”