Turkish filmmaker Erkan Yazici wants to work with Cannes winner Payal Kapadia

For 51-year-old Turkish filmmaker Erkan Yazici, art must be brave and counter the ‘usual’. His new film ‘Fragments from the East’, which portrays a woman’s struggle for survival as she escapes war and crosses paths with a runaway Russian general on his own journey of redemption, is competing in the ‘International Competition’ at the 31st Kolkata International Film Festival.

Just like ‘Fragments from the East’, which narrates the lives of people who are leaving their homeland, his debut feature film ‘Faraway Land’ was about a 12-year-old boy who escaped from the refugee camp to take the keepsake inherited from his father. In his cinema, time is not chronological. It’s metaphysical and he tries to look at tragedy from a distance.

Yazici is accompanied to the Kolkata film festival with his producer, Mahpare Tanin. She informed us how ‘Fragments from the East’ was shot for over two months in the snowy terrains of Trabzon in Turkey at an altitude of 2,700 m, with wolves and bears being the occasional visitors on the set. In fact, the unforgiving landscape in ‘Fragments from the East’ mirrors the harsh realities faced by its two protagonists.

Interestingly, Yazici’s mother is a big fan of Bollywood and Mahpare has watched almost all of Aamir Khan’s films. In fact, Aamir Khan’s films are a huge attraction in Turkey, she said. She is also a big fan of the ‘Mahabharata’. As for Yazici, he believes his style to some extent resembles Payel Kapadia, the Indian director who scripted history for winning the Grand Prix at the 77th Cannes Film Festival for ‘All We Imagine as Light’. “I liked her style of filmmaking very much. And I hope one day I can work with Payal Kapadia,” he said.