Forty Square Meters of Germany

Established as a guest worker in Germany, Dursun brings his young wife Turna from Anatolia. Scared that she’ll get lost in the big city where she doesn’t speak the language or know the customs, Dursun demands that she stay home all day, making Turna’s experience of her new country the 40 square meters trapped between the walls of their tiny apartment. Brought up to obey men, Turna tries to adjust to her new life, her only communication with the outside world being shared gazes with a young girl who lives across the way. In his first film, Tevfik Başer touched upon a subject of growing concern, but as of then rarely treated in the cinema: the millions of Turks who had emigrated to the West in search of work and better lives. He wisely avoids assigning blame for this tough situation—there are no real villains here, just simple people caught up in an overwhelming system. —The Film Society of Lincoln Center