Lunch with Toprak
An interview with Onur Yagiz, director of Toprak
How did you come up with the idea of a child who is faced with a responsibility too great for his age?
It’s a similar situation to one that I found myself in during my childhood. Because I was the eldest child and my parents didn’t speak French, I was their interpreter. I was often told how lucky I was to speak two languages, but I can tell you that it wasn’t always the case.
How did you find the actors?
Strictly speaking, I don’t really conduct casting. I just choose my actors by feel, it happens naturally. However, it was really difficult to find a child who spoke both fluent French and Turkish. Generally, children of immigrants don’t often master the language of their origins.
Why did you use black and white in the second scene in Toprak?
I saw this film as the ultrasound of a bilingual 8-year-old child who is about to grow up twice as fast because he has two native tongues: the language he learned from his parents and the one he learned at school. It is also the ultrasound of a family whose members are connected and form but a single body. During the ultrasound scene that you mention for example, the doctor conducts an ultrasound of the twins whereas the camera examines the Öztürk family. In short, my esthetic choices stem from the desire to synchronize the form and the content. Like an ultrasound, my film is in 4:3 and in black and white.
What was it that interested you in the relationships between the members of this family faced with an approaching childbirth?
What interested me was to say that love is the cord that links the child to his parents.
Do you have any plans to make other films about the sensitivity involved in the act of translation?
Being a child of immigrants, translation has always been at the core of my existence and I think that my films will always reflect this.
What sort of freedom would you say the short film format allows?
Unlike feature-length films where the financial stakes are higher, I think the short film is a place where we are more free to express an intimate vision of the world.
If you’ve already been to Clermont-Ferrand, could you share with us an anecdote or story from the festival? If not, what are your expectations for this year?
This is my first selection at the Clermont-Ferrand festival and I am thrilled that my film will be screened in front of a large audience. Films only exist when they are being seen, so it is with joy that I will come to present my film.
Toprak is being shown in National Competition F1.
