Elderly Mustafa learns that his mother tongue is facing with extinction and he sees himself responsible for the extinction as he couldn’t teach this language to his children. In the period that he needs to rest because of his illness, while obligated to confront the idea of getting end of his life, he decides to record his language which dies on the vine as far as he remembers.
Life; becomes smaller as a flat in a large city and grows longer as the moments that we couldn’t drink a glass of water after waking up from nightmare.
" Where is my mother tongue " is an alienation and isolation story which portrayed by real characters with real places and has black humor at some parts. It is about; the efforts of an elderly, who thinks that he will be dead soon, trying to create his own solution with hope for the desperation that he faced with the extinction of his mother tongue; “the mother tongue” reality which cannot be hidden anymore after the years of banning for speaking own language even at home and the effects of the cultural trauma created by the official policies in Turkey over a middle class family.
Director’s view:
Our earth rotates and changes. However, it can’t be a coincidence that two thousand four hundred languages are in danger as mentioned in the 2008 report of UNESCO. While globalism creates a monotype social perception, at the same time it forms its own language and forces the usage. Languages originated from oral culture tradition like Zazaish (Dımılki, Kırmancki) have no chance to survive in this climate.
On the other hand, how can someone mention that a death caused by the local assimilation policy is natural? What can fill the gap which will be formed because of the extinction of any language? With Nationalist policies? With another language? What about the universe of spirit that has been founded above the cultural existence by human? If the start of everything is nomenclature; denying the languages of other’s wouldn’t this will be the denial of their existence? Perhaps counted as dead while still alive is something like this. Maybe the inner voice that my father Mustafa Kahraman hears in his dreams for years is what he was looking for. But, our inner voice is in which language?
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