About Film

Toprak used to be a food stylist in the city and her husband was a ballet. After they got married, they said ‘we want to live in the mountains’ and bought some land just enough for themselves in Toros Mountains. In a short time, the number of their goats reached to 300. Neither of them had any idea or experience about those kind of things. They finished the construction of their house with the help of their neighbors in the village. They lived in their house for seven years and named their child ‘Renk’. Living in the nature and, in addition to that, animal breeding were too hard on them and their relationship. Their story ended in going back to the city life. However, it wasn’t a moving back to the big city. Toprak moved to Edremit, a town in the skirts of Kaz Mountains. Her dream is to do farming with permaculture method in her newly-bought olive grove. She says ‘I miss my house in the mountains and I will definitely go back one day.’

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Movie Quotes

Toprak: “I had only one neighbor, Aunt Ayşe. She was okay with the idea. She was even happy to have a neighbor but her sons found it so strange. I mean why would I leave Istanbul and come here? Come to a mountain top? We had conversations like yes it’s normal to come to a village but not to a mountain. Only my grandmother didn’t like it, she was alive back then. She couldn’t accept the fact that I chose to live on a mountain top at that age, she didn’t like it.”

Purpose, Approach

With their structuring, crowd and chaos making our lives a torture most of the time, are big cities our only alternatives? Can there be a conscious and preferred country life in our country too? Is it possible to live without being apart from the nature or being carried away by the consumption frenzy? Can there be an urban farmer? Are all these running away from the city, these pursuits a kind of trend? We think aloud with the people whose lives we witness. We are reconsidering the cities we live in. We ask if it is possible to build a new living space with our own color and shape apart from the models that are presented to us.

In a world where everything is constructed upon the urban life are these life trials utopic?

In our narration which we used the witness method basically, we will have questions that we seek answers. Is it possible for people who have spent so much time in big cities to get rid of this urbanism that stick on them?

The work done is very important but how and what is the source of the responses of practical life?

How do people who have little or no contact with the nature have a start in the country? Is this a reunion or just a struggle with the nature? Is the word ‘it’s not the nature that needs us but we need the nature’ valid in every situation?

Is it possible for the ones who fought or struggled with the nature all the time and had a public memory to have another relationship in an instant?

Our film focuses on the ones who leave the city in order to ‘have a collective life in the country’. Although we take a stand with the ‘another life is possible’ idea, our attitude to these stories do not show it. In these life style trials, we not only witness the things created but also show the things that do not work or contradict.

Crew

Yapım – Production

TRT Belgesel Kanalı – TRT Tourism and Documentary Channel

Yönetmen, Metin Yazarı – Written and Directed by Bingöl Elmas

Görüntü Yönetmeni – Director of Photography Koray Kesik

Kameraman – Cameraman Mehmet Eren Bozbaş

Kurgu – Editing Uğur Hamidoğulları, Ali İlhan

Ses – Sound Özkan Arınkal

Müzik – Music Taner Sarf Yapım

Yönetim Asistanı – Assistants to the Director Sultan İlhan, Özgür Küçüktülü

Görsel Tasarım ve Jenerik -Color Correction and Generic Desing Ali İlhan

Ses ve Görüntü Deşifresi Aliye Düşünmez, Sultan İlhan

Çeviriler – Translation

İngilizce- English: Şirin Bahar Demirel

Rusça – Rusia : Emine Beldağ

Almanca- German: Veronika Hartman

Altyazı Uygulama – Subtitle Application Onur Çakır

Muhasebe – Accounting Metin Açar

© TRT Belgesel Kanalı – 2012

Appearances

Toprak İncili, Mehmet Şükrü Dinler, Mehmet İncili

Supporters

Contributors Acknowledgements

The Association of Documentary Filmmakers in Turkey (BSB)

Technical support

Çan Film Production,KutupAyısı Documentary Productions, Akademi Production

Special Thanks to

İncilay Erdoğan,  Banu Uzpeder, Melek Toraman, Mehmet Aksoy, Zuhal Kaynak, Hakan Paşalı Çiğdem Kesik, Hayriye Savaşçıoğlu, Zeycan Elmas, Ayfer Tokatlıoğlu, Alev Elmas Mehmet Eryılmaz, Taner Sarf, Erdem Z. Demirkol

“This documentary has been produced by Asmin Film for TRT.”