Aus der Ferne is a personal travelogue, a documentary about a trip through Turkey. Thomas Arslan, who filmed the journey himself, undertook the trip in May/June 2005. The route takes him through Istanbul and Ankara to Gaziantep in the southeastern part of the country, from there further eastwards via Diyarbakir and Van to Dogubayazit near the Iranian border.
The film describes moments during the journey that differ from the usual motifs that inform the image of present-day Turkey – from impressions of day-to-day life in such Western cities as Istanbul and Ankara all the way to regions in the country’s easternmost territory that were locked in battle until recently.
Aus der Ferne is not a journalistic reportage. The film is not trying to prove anything, but rather to observe. It is the personal look of the filmmaker at this country. —Berlin International Film festival
Thomas Arslan was born in Braunschweig on July 16, 1962. From 1963 to 1967 he lived in Essen, and from 1967 to 1971 in Ankara, Turkey, where he attended primary school. In 1971 he returned to Essen, completing high school there in 1982. He completed his community service in Hamburg in 1984, spending 1985/86 in Munich where he studied German language and literature and history for two terms. He studied at the film school dffb in Berlin from 1986-92, and has been a screenwriter and filmmaker ever since. He took part in the Panorama section of the Berlinale in 1994 with Mach die Musik leiser; his documentary Aus der Ferne was shown in the Forum in 2006. Since 2007, he has been a professor of narrative film at the Berlin University of Arts. —filmportal.de
