In the Blind Spot
Official poster
Directed by	Ayşe Polat
Written by	Ayşe Polat
Produced by	Mehmet Aktaş Janna Heine
Starring	Katja Bürkle Ahmet Varlı Çağla Yurga Aybi Era
Cinematography	Patrick Orth
Edited by	Serhad Mutlu, Jörg Volkmar
Music by	Dynamedion
Production company	Mitosfilm
Distributed by	ArtHood Entertainment
Release date	19 February 2023 (2023-02-19) ( Berlinale)
Running time	118 minutes
Country	Germany
Languages	German Turkish Kurdish English

In the Blind Spot ( German: Im toten Winkel) is a 2023 German mystery thriller film ^[1] directed and written by Ayşe Polat. Starring Katja Bürkle, Ahmet Varlı, Çağla Yurga and Aybi Era, the film is about Melek, a 7–year–old Turkish girl and her father Zafer, who are drawn into a complex net of conspiracy, paranoia and generational trauma. ^[2] It is selected in Encounter at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival, where it had its world premiere on 19 February 2023. ^{[3] [4]}

Synopsis

In a remote Kurdish village, in northeastern Turkey, a documentary is shot by German film crew. They spot an old woman performing ritual to memory of her missing son. In the village, Melek, a 7-year-old Turkish girl lives, whose nanny is the Kurdish translator of the film crew. Zafer, her father works for an ominous group. When she apparently get haunted by unknown power, he gets caught between loyalty to them and fear for his family's well-being. This eventually developes into a ruinous force. The film unravels a complex net of conspiracy, paranoia and generational trauma.

Cast

• Katja Bürkle [ de] as Simone
• Ahmet Varlı [ tr] as Zafer
• Çağla Yurga as Melek
• Aybi Era [ de] as Leyla
• Maximilian Hemmersdorfer as Christian
• Nihan Okutucu as Sibel
• Tudan Ürper as Hatice
• Mutallip Müjdeci as Hasan
• Rıza Akın as Burhan
• Aziz Çapkurt as Eyüp

Production

The film was shot from 24 April 2021 to 24 June 2021 in Turkey and Hamburg. ^{[5] [6]}

Reception

Jay Weissberg for The Film Verdict wrote, "A bold and chilling political thriller of shifting perspectives in which the weight of state-sanctioned terror begins to crush a security agent in eastern Turkey, where trauma and paranoia rip apart the social fabric." ^[7]

Joseph Fahim for Middle East Eye wrote: "A political thriller imbued with scorching commentary, this is Polat’s finest film to date and is a snapshot of a lawless place governed by xenophobia and paranoia ... The use of the camera, both as a tool of surveillance and as a recorder of repressed truths, reflects the hazards of image-making in a culture terrified - yet fascinated - by what can be and what is shown." ^[8]

Vladan Petkovic for Cineuropa wrote, "A mystery-thriller with Rashomon-style storytelling, German-Kurdish filmmaker Ayşe Polat's In the Blind Spot sets up an intriguing premise ... The film combines its key cinematography with smartphone videos and hidden-camera footage, which makes it feel expansive and rich on the surface, but the overly tidy editing makes the film's structure too obvious, stripping it of movie magic. On the other hand, the city where the story takes place is an excellent setting that combines magnificent ancient ruins with dark, narrow alleyways and abandoned construction sites. As such, it is an ideal background both for the mystery and for the overarching theme of transgenerational trauma ..." ^[1]

Accolades

References

External links

• In the Blind Spot at IMDb
• In the Blind Spot at Berlinale
• In the Blind Spot at ArtHood Entertainment