The doc­u­men­tary FROM FAR AWAY shows film­mak­er Thomas Arslan’s jour­ney back to the coun­try of his origin after twenty years: Arslan and his small team set out in the coun­try’s “Euro­pean” metrop­o­lis Istan­bul and Ankara in the West and travel to the fur­thest cor­ners of the East, their last stop being Dogubayaz­it, a small town near the Iran­ian border. Arslan’s pre­sen­ta­tion of Turkey’s cities and people in smooth, long shots that are accom­pa­nied by short, unpre­ten­tious phras­es from the off is an invi­ta­tion for the audi­ence to indulge in the images. The film is not ambi­tious direc­tors’ project – it is an invi­ta­tion to share the film­mak­ers’ per­son­al and atten­tive gaze on a coun­try that has remained large­ly strange for him. “At the time when I made the film, the dis­course about Turkey was very heated, and it con­tin­ues to be that way. The Occi­dent, the Orient – these are terms that are dis­con­nect­ed from real­i­ty to me. The film’s idea is simply to cap­ture images that are not at once com­pat­i­ble with a the­o­ret­i­cal dis­course or a mere illus­tra­tion of mat­ters already known. I wanted to open my eyes for simple, tan­gi­ble things, for the every­day life in this country.”
Thomas Arslan