The documentary Dying to Divorce, has been selected to represent Britain at the Oscars as the official entry in the Best International Feature Film category. The film depicts the politics behind an epidemic of femicide in Turkey.
A British-made documentary, Dying to Divorce, has been selected to represent Britain at the Oscars as the official entry in the Best International Feature Film category. The film depicts the murderous misogyny and dangerous politics behind an epidemic of femicide in Turkey, a country where an astonishing one in three women is subjected to some form of domestic violence.
The film was made over five long years by director Chloe Fairweather and her friend and producer, Sinead Kirwan.
Fairweather and Kirwan have conquered a series of challenges, including repeated battles for funds and lengthy delays imposed by a glacial Turkish legal system. “There were lots of times I felt it was not going to be possible to finish the film,” admitted Fairweather, “but that was the good thing about having Sinead there. If one of us was down, the other was offering encouragement. I’m so pleased it’s been chosen as an Academy Award contender by Bafta, partly because, although it is such an important story, it would have been very risky for it to be made inside Turkey by film-makers there.”
The incidents of violence against women, which are the subject of the documentary, were selected from the cases filed by the We Will Stop Femicides Platform in Turkey.
At the heart of Fairweather’s documentary is the work of Ipek Bozkurt, the campaigning Turkish lawyer and activist who has guided both Kubra and Arzu, along with many others, through the painful aftermath of appalling injuries, helping them courageously press charges against their husbands. Bozkurt, who was in Britain this weekend for the premiere, and she told the Observer she remains determined to fight back against prejudices in the Turkish criminal justice system, working alongside her comrades on the anti-femicide platform she has established with other Turkish lawyers as a support for survivors and victims’ families across the country.
The film has already been praised at European film festivals, receiving multiple nominations and prizes. But in Istanbul, where a prestigious film festival is staged every year, the Turkish programmers decided the film was too provocative to screen, said Bozkurt.
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