Jîn (2013)
Director: Reha Erdem
Country: Turkey
Runtime: 122 min
Jîn is something of a Red Riding Hood, a 17-year-old girl determined to
live, to participate in life no matter what it takes; and to this end
she finds herself battling her way bravely through dark forests.
The film opens with Jîn fleeing an armed organization in the mountains
for an unknown reason. She spends solitary days in the mountains and
forests hiding both from organization members and from security forces.
Her aim is to get to the big city, to achieve her dreams of new and
wider worlds unknown to her until now. Armed with a small but robust
body and a fresh but powerful sense of resolve, she manages to create a
space for herself in the dark and forbidding wilderness. She gets caught
in crossfire and courageously dodges the bullets, she knows fear and
cold, she finds things to eat. The animals she closes ranks with,
perhaps because they face similar threats, are her greatest source of
strength and consolation. She shares a cave with a bear to escape a
shelling, she finds an ally in a deer, she treats an injured donkey, she
makes a pact with a savage bird whose egg she eats, shes consoled by a
wildcat, alerted by a snake and protected by a horse...
Eventually, she lays her hands on some civil clothing and makes her way
down from the mountains. But for Jîn, the plains are more dangerous than
the mountains, more threatening and more hurtful. No matter how hard
she tries, how resolutely she struggles, she cant break through the
barricade closing in on her, and the world of her dreams remains
elusive. She continues to take a battering both to her willowy frame and
to the feelings and sensitivities inside. She returns, deeply
disillusioned, to her solitary existence in the mountains and reaches
out mournfully to the natural world. She finds herself caught once more
between toppled trees and dismembered animals as the shells and bullets
rain down. By now her sense of rebellion has turned to despair. Stuck in
an impasse, Jîn has no one but the trees and animals to nurse her
wounded body and soul.
Director: Vinko Bresan
