Explore titles
Keje poster

Keje

Film20232 min

Directed by Fatma Belkıs

No community ratings yet on FilmStash · 0 membersOne score per member · Verified member ratings

Writer/director Fatma Belkıs reclaims the filmic artifacts of Turkish discrimination against Kurds in the singular micro short, Keje. Belkis picks up cuttingroom-floor remains from the 1968 film, Seyyit Han, a film that managed distribution approval by the Turkish Committee on Film Censorship only after producer, Abdurrahman Keskiner, excised every single utterance of the leading female character’s name, “Keje”—because it was a Kurdish name. This rejection of a Kurdish name was only one tyrannical enforcement of an official state policy exacting a comprehensive denial of Kurds as an ethnic population. Here then, with redemptive operatic ease, Belkis resurrects and coalesces every single utterance of the name in a kind of inevitable rapid-fire response and features the “Keje” quickfire between Seyyit Han’s original opening sequence and the film’s final “The End”. Keje is not just genre-defiant but utterly defiant. And restorative.Read moreLess

Writer/director Fatma Belkıs reclaims the filmic artifacts of Turkish discrimination against Kurds in the singular micro short, Keje. Belkis picks up cuttingroom-floor remains from the 1968 film, Seyyit Han, a film that managed distribution approval by the Turkish Committee on Film Censorship only after producer, Abdurrahman Keskiner, excised every single utterance of the leading female character’s name, “Keje”—because it was a Kurdish name. This rejection of a Kurdish name was only one tyrannical enforcement of an official state policy exacting a comprehensive denial of Kurds as an ethnic population. Here then, with redemptive operatic ease, Belkis resurrects and coalesces every single utterance of the name in a kind of inevitable rapid-fire response and features the “Keje” quickfire between Seyyit Han’s original opening sequence and the film’s final “The End”. Keje is not just genre-defiant but utterly defiant. And restorative.

The story

Writer/director Fatma Belkıs reclaims the filmic artifacts of Turkish discrimination against Kurds in the singular micro short, Keje. Belkis picks up cuttingroom-floor remains from the 1968 film, Seyyit Han, a film that managed distribution approval by the Turkish Committee on Film Censorship only after producer, Abdurrahman Keskiner, excised every single utterance of the leading female character’s name, “Keje”—because it was a Kurdish name. This rejection of a Kurdish name was only one tyrannical enforcement of an official state policy exacting a comprehensive denial of Kurds as an ethnic population. Here then, with redemptive operatic ease, Belkis resurrects and coalesces every single utterance of the name in a kind of inevitable rapid-fire response and features the “Keje” quickfire between Seyyit Han’s original opening sequence and the film’s final “The End”. Keje is not just genre-defiant but utterly defiant. And restorative.

Loading community activity…

Community reviews

Write your review →

Cast & crew

Cast information isn’t available yet.

Explore the crew