‘Turkey’s Got Talent’ Finalist and Violence Survivor Doc ‘My Name is Happy’ Sets U.K. Release, Unveils Trailer (EXCLUSIVE)

Naman Ramachandran
·3 min read
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Red Zed Films and October Films’ documentary “My Name Is Happy” will have a limited U.K. theatrical run from May 21.

Directed by Ayse Toprak (“Mr Gay Syria) and Emmy and BAFTA nominated Nick Read (“Bolshoi Babylon”), the film follows Mutlu Kaya, a Kurdish woman and promising singer from southeastern Turkey whose dreams were about to come true in 2015 when she reached the finals of “Turkey’s Got Talent.” Days before the final she was gunned down by a man whose marriage proposal she had refused. She survived – with a bullet in her brain. After years of rehabilitation from life threatening injuries, the family was again struck by violence. This time, Mutlu’s carer, her sister Dilek, did not survive a murder attempt by another jilted suitor.

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The film observes the close-knit musical family through their turbulent ordeals, their struggle to recover, and their fight for justice and the rights of women to live free from male violence in Turkey and beyond. Intimate shots of the Kaya family are complemented by archive footage of excerpts from the talent show and news items on the topic. Mutlu rallies her two million online followers with a protest song addressing the issue of femicide.

“My Name Is Happy” is executive produced by October Films’ Adam Bullmore (“End of the Storm”, “Viagra the Little Blue Pill”, “This is Football”) and Siobhan Sinnerton (“For Sama”, “Lyra”, “In her Hands”).

It had its world premiere at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in 2022, and its U.S. premiere at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in February 2023. The film won the Human Rights/Human Wrongs Award at the Human Documentary Film Festival in Oslo in March 2023, before winning the Storyboard Collective Impact Award and the PGI Youth Jury Award at the 21st FIFDH Film Festival in Geneva. The film will also screen at the 63rd Krakow Film Festival and other festivals through to end of 2023.

The film’s sold out U.K. premiere on May 19 at London’s Curzon Soho will be hosted by Channel 4 and Turkey Mozaik Foundation, a London based NGO providing financial support to innovative civil society organisations in Turkey. It will subsequently play at London’s Rio Dalston, Arthouse Crouch End and Hackney Picturehouse and Manchester’s Home, with other venues to be added.

Read and Toprak said in a joint statement: “We began speaking with Mutlu and her family seven years ago in 2016, soon after she returned home from hospital. At that time, she was still convalescing. We had to be patient, to find the right time to build a relationship.

In late 2020, soon after a series of widely reported and brutal cases of femicide in Turkey, and not long after the murder of her sister, we began filming with Mutlu and her family. Working with an entirely Turkish, and mainly female crew, Mutlu gifted us her trust.

Our vision was to capture the intimate and epic nature of Mutlu’s story – to tell it with passion but also compassionately, through the lens of cinema, rather than conventional reportage. We hope audiences will enter her world, share her perspective, limited but not defined by her disability… most of all to celebrate her as a survivor.

Her’s is a universal story, one that reflects on escalating global issues of domestic violence and women’s rights. To that end we are planning a carefully planned social impact campaign alongside the film’s release, with Mutlu joining the debate, to increase pressure on governments and leaders to reduce the risks women face – daily, worldwide.”

Watch the trailer here:

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