Eren Önsöz was born 1972 in Kayseri, Turkey. She did an MA in German literature and massmedia studies. During her studies in Düsseldorf and Rome she started writing and acting in political satire and performed from 1990-1999 with “KGB – Satire against Evil”. Since 1997 she has been working as a freelance journalist for radio and television. In 2005 she received a postgraduate degree in film and television at the Kunsthochschule für Medien in Köln. “Import-Export” was her diploma film.
HAYMATLOZ
Documentary / Germany / 2015
90 Min.
"Haymatloz" is a beautiful film, directed with a great sense of timing and power of images, and with a strong political focus toward the end. The film's protagonists are concerned about a country where, step by step, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is undoing Atatürk's achievements and Turkey's social progress."
"Having reached retirement age, they are living comfortably in Switzerland and Germany like so many academics of their generation. But is this really home to them?
Susan Ferenz-Schwartz, Kurt Heilbronn, Engin Bagda, Enver Hirsch and Elisabeth Weber-Belling are sharing an uncommon past. There are lots of Turkish migrants in Germany. But these five people are children of German migrants. Long before the migration movement from Turkey to Germany their parents took the opposite road and found themselves a new home in Turkey. Having spent their youths in Istanbul and Ankara, sooner or later all of them relocated back to Germany.
But being German Jews who grew up in Turkey they never felt quite at home here. In „Haymatloz“ all five protagonists share a deep longing for Turkey.
10 years ago journalist and director Eren Önsöz journeyed into the German-Turkish past with her graduate film „Import – Export“ for the first time. Now she delves into another unkown chapter of German-Turkish history with the effortlessly directed documentary „Haymatloz“.
Her protagonists tell the story of how the „Advisory Office for German Scientists“ established contact between the mostly secular Jewish academics and Atatürk, who was also striving for secularization in the 30s and how the newcomers were welcomed in Turkey. In their home country they were marked for death, here it almost felt like paradise for them. They went on to leave a huge mark on the young Turkish country.
The lawyer Ernst Hirsch wrote legal commentary still valid to this day. Architects like Clemens Holzmeister or Bruno Taut significantly shaped the newly founded capital Ankara with their buildings and the artist Rudolf Benning, after being villainized by the Nazis as „depraved“, left a big impression not only on his art students but also on the streets of Istanbul with his sculptures.
When the children of those who built all this talk about the atmosphere of new beginnings, their longing for these past times becomes palpable. So Eren Önsöz takes them on a journey into the past. They visit childhood places, enjoy the beauty of Istanbul, the Bosporus coastline and the scents of busy marketplaces. The memories are not without melancholy, though. The liberal Turkey of their childhood doesn't seem to exist anymore. Atatürks modernization as well as their parent's achievements are gradually reversed by Erdogan and his politics. By the end Eren Önsöz' journey into the past opens a very important discourse about the present and future of Turkish society."
(Christian Meyer)
IMPORT-EXPORT
Documentary / Germany / 2006
Digibeta / 90 Min.
A film by Eren Önsöz
Aren’t 50 years of migration and immigrant worker clichés enough? The German-Turkish story hasn’t been in existence since yesterday and places like “Untertürkheim” prove this fact. The documentary is a speedy road movie through the German-Turkish history and shows that Import-Export has been taking place for centuries...