Turkish transgender film gets marks for bravery

Director, writer, producer Emre Yalgın’s debut feature, ‘Teslimiyet’ (Other Angels), is a brave attempt to shed light on the lives of the transgender community in Istanbul – since such women are usually subjected to one-dimensional stereotypes. While the transgender characters and actors impress, the film fails when the straight characters walk in

Followers of Turkish movie blogs and movie pages on Facebook might have noticed last week that there was a lot of chatter urging people to go see the feature Teslimiyet (Other Angels). Although you could read about its groundbreaking subject matter, and why we had a social duty to watch it in theaters, we had yet to see a film review among the dozens of blog entries.

Other Angels is the first feature movie to take a candid look at the lives of the transgender community in Istanbul since 1993’s Dönersen Islık Çal (Whistle If You Come Back). The heavy virtual traffic was thanks to those sensitive about the tragic lives of transgender people in Turkey. Here was a chance to make transgender people more visible, a chance to watch them as multidimensional characters as opposed to the simplified and unfair stereotypes they were accustomed to being depicted with. The movie follows the lives of four transgender women living together in the underbelly of Istanbul. They are all sex workers, as is the case unfortunately for most transgender women in Turkey. Save for the novice Sanem (Didem Soylu), the other three are street-smart, true warriors in a world where they are constantly on the lookout.

Click here for full article (Hürriyet Daily News)