Şafağa Kadar

The Particle / Zerre - by Erdem Tepegoz (2012)

‘Zerre’ focuses on Zeynep as she tries to make ends meet on her own, taking care of her mother and her daughter. Their struggle comes to a peak when Zeynep is fired from the textile mill she is working in.

In 1908, Sultan Abdul Hamid rules the Turkish Empire, but he is faced with the threat of revolt by the Young Turk party. He allows Hilmi Pasha, the leader of the Young Turks, to return from exile and form the country's first constitutional government. With tensions still growing, chief of police Kadar Pasha assassinates Hassan Bey, the leader of the Old Turk party, and makes it look as if a Young Turk committed the crime, in order to give Abdul an excuse for arresting the Young Turk leaders. Meanwhile, Abdul becomes infatuated with a visiting Austrian singer. When she rejects his advances, she endangers both herself and her fiancé, a Turkish officer who also knows who really shot Hassan Bey.

The film was rejected by Communist censors for over a decade, doubly censored, one might say, by ideological repression and the director’s own internal struggle with the powerful personal and political material that is its subject.