My Father The Turk

Mein Vater, der Türke

Overview

The German filmmaker Marcus Attila Vetter has a Turkish father, Cahit Cubuk, and he goes to visit him for the first time in this documentary. He travels to the Anatolian village of Cubuk Koye, where his 72-year-old father lives with his wife and two daughters. A film crew that got there ahead of him interviews the hopeful father, who wonders what his son will be like. "If he's anything like me, he'll be warm-hearted. If he's more like his mother, the prospects are not very good." Marcus films the Turkish landscape and talks with his newly found family, who all cry many tears. Marcus's father feels that he had no choice back then but to leave Germany, and his halfsisters explain how much they missed their father when he was away. In the meantime, we hear passages read in voice-over from the diary of Marcus's mother Gerlinde, from the time that she was with Cahit - how they met, fell in love and ultimately broke up.