Hakan Aytekin

The team gets stuck in the town of "Fenk" in Elazığ while running away from Orhan's men. They take refuge in Murtaza Ağa's farm, where they start working to stay out of sight and make a living. Murtaza Ağa is known for being a cruel and stingy landlord. Just as the group is at their wits' end, they receive a call from Abdi's wife, Neriman, and are forced to flee the farm in a hurry and head to Kastamonu. On their way, they steal Murtaza Ağa's money and kidnap his daughter.

Directed by Suha Arın in 1979, Tahtacı Fatma is one of the earliest documentaries on the ethnic Tahtacı community. In an interview conducted in 1999, Suha Arın mentions that he wished to make a follow-up film that includes updated information about their conditions as he had not been in touch since several years. However, Arın passed away in 2004 without realizing his wish. Why was Arın curious again about a community whom he already worked with twenty years earlier? The 40 Years After Fatma observes the changes which Tahtacıs went through, with the company of documentarists who worked with Suha Arın back in 1979, at their native land.

Depicting the events of Mardin-İdil in the late 1980's, the film deals with international migration of Assyrians in the context of "leaving" and "staying", based on the story of an ordinary group. Today, among the 18 people who are narrated, nine live in Germany, seven live in Switzerland and only two people stayed in Turkey. This documentary, while combining the instants, on the other hand explores the memories of the past and today through the present atmosphere and aims to answer these questions: "Is it hard to go? To stay? Or to be together again?"

The team gets stuck in the town of "Fenk" in Elazığ while running away from Orhan's men. They take refuge in Murtaza Ağa's farm, where they start working to stay out of sight and make a living. Murtaza Ağa is known for being a cruel and stingy landlord. Just as the group is at their wits' end, they receive a call from Abdi's wife, Neriman, and are forced to flee the farm in a hurry and head to Kastamonu. On their way, they steal Murtaza Ağa's money and kidnap his daughter.

Depicting the events of Mardin-İdil in the late 1980's, the film deals with international migration of Assyrians in the context of "leaving" and "staying", based on the story of an ordinary group. Today, among the 18 people who are narrated, nine live in Germany, seven live in Switzerland and only two people stayed in Turkey. This documentary, while combining the instants, on the other hand explores the memories of the past and today through the present atmosphere and aims to answer these questions: "Is it hard to go? To stay? Or to be together again?"