WE FORGOT TO RETURN + SEMRA ERTAN

We Forgot to Return
Fatih Akın, Germany, 2001, 60 min.

In his first documentary We Forgot to Return, Fatih Akın follows his family’s history from his hometown of Hamburg back to his parents’ village in Turkey, from where they migrated to Germany as so-called “guest workers” in the 1960s. The film looks at the collective memory of migration through a personal, as well as a (trans-) national perspective.

Semra Ertan
Cana Bilir-Meier, Germany 2013, 7:30 min.

The short documentary Semra Ertan portrays the life of the poet, who was born in Turkey in 1956 and moved to join her parents in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1972. She worked as a construction draftswoman and an interpreter, while writing over 350 poems. In 1982 Semra Ertan set herself on fire in Hamburg to protest against racism in Germany.

Ebru Taşdemir, freelance journalist, studied Turkology and journalism in Berlin. Since 2015 she has been supervising the mentoring program for young journalists of the initiative Neue Deutsche Medienmacher*innen (New German Media Professionals).