Kara Kafa

Cafer, a Turkish metalworker, moves his family from their Turkish village to Germany. He sees Germany as the country of infinite opportunity and is certain that the move will save his family from poverty. But their new life brings a lot that is difficult and unexpected. His wife becomes involved in the women’s movement and undergoes changes both outwardly and mentally based on the friends she makes there; the older son is lonely and doesn’t want to go to school; the daughter has to stay home and take care of her newborn brother. With its leftist, political view of labour migration, Kara Kafa (Black Head) distinguishes itself from many other examples of German-Turkish cinema. After it was completed in 1980, the film was banned by the Turkish censorship committee of the time, which claimed it hurt “the honour of Germany, our befriended nation”. Charges were brought against the director Korhan Yurtsever and he fled to Berlin, where he lived in exile for a number of years. The original negatives that could not be confiscated by the Turkish authorities surfaced unexpectedly last year and served as the basis for this restoration.