“Films like Earth Song are a good example that we need to be reminded how grand schemes do harm and destroy lives.”

For those who, even in diaspora, are still haunted by their generational trauma…

Diaspora is a heavy word, easier said than done. Like many Kurdish people not feeling safe or not seeing a future in Türkiye for a long while, director Erol Mintaş chose to continue his life and work in Finland. His sophomore effort Earth Song (Maan laulu) is the first product of that decision and comes almost 12 years later than his debut, Song of My Mother (Klama dayîka min). Mintaş is telling the story of other Kurdish expatriates in Helsinki who have been there for much longer, and the film leads us to look back to the main breaking point in the history of the Turkish/Kurdish conflict: what happened at Diyarbakır Prison in the years following the 1980 coup d’état in Türkiye.

Our point of view into this story is Rojin. She moved to Finland with her father when she was still a child, grew up and built a family there. A family that is falling apart. She’s breaking up with her husband Ferhat, also Kurdish, she has trouble connecting with their gifted 12-year-old daughter Azad, and her father Nizam has a secret to share with her in his last days. But the most disturbing issue in her daily life is the constant ringing in her ear, something neither she nor the doctors can explain.

Does Rojin belong to Finland now, as much as she thinks she does? Or does she really belong to her family? A father with a secret, an estranged husband going away, and a daughter she can’t even speak to without her sincerity being questioned. Or is she simply surrounded by all this noise, and the lack of belonging?

Throughout the film, Rojin’s life flows in several languages: Finnish, Kurdish, Turkish, English, even Japanese. She works with a humanitarian medical care group, meaning she has to travel a lot to different war zones, and the specifics of those war zones are hard to put a finger on. It’s like the details and languages change, but the conflicts stay the same, and there’s a never-ending chaos out there in the world. Rojin puts herself there, selflessly, and that makes it even harder for her to connect with her family. Her daughter Azad has the right view of things in some respects. Rojin is so focused on helping the world outside, in different regions across the globe, that she doesn’t even notice what’s going on with those in her immediate vicinity. She carries a generational trauma on her shoulders, like a modern-day Atlas, and all of her actions are led by that trauma. She forgets to listen to her own family, and to heal herself first.

Mintaş doesn’t really give away too much, and lets his audience extract their own meaning from his narrative, except about the details of what happened at the Diyarbakır Prison. The military regime was so ruthless and inhumane towards Kurdish people during that period that the trauma has continued shaping the lives of Kurds for generations. Rojin coming face to face with the details of those days, and how they directly affected not only her family but herself, also takes the audience through the horrors of an era and the origins of a continuing political and social conflict.

That kind of confrontation is powerful enough to take Rojin on a journey to her homeland, still surrounded by military presence. The journey becomes a way to finally connect with Azad, but the real burning question remains. Are there any ways for old wounds to ever heal? Or will the Kurdish people keep on suffering from this generational trauma?

These questions are always relevant, maybe even more so these days. The Turkish government is supposedly trying to end the cycle of violence going on for decades, aiming to bring peace to the region, but can this film even be shown in Türkiye? Will anything really change? While at the same time Kurdish militia groups who once fought in northern Syria against Islamist terrorism are now being left all alone when they are up against the very people they saved the Western world from, just because the interests of the US have changed. They are being treated – by the Western world – like pawns in a game. The question remains: can anything really change?

Films like Earth Song are a good example that we need to be reminded how grand schemes do harm and destroy lives. Here’s to Erol Mintaş not having to wait for another ten years to make a new film, now that he’s working in Finland. And hopefully he can find his voice over there, and have it be even stronger in the future.