Tragedies of children in Turkish cinema revisited

Director Ömer Can’s debut ‘Toprağa uzanan eller’ (King of the cotton) tells the harrowing issue of child labor with an elegant story told through the eyes of children, giving a breath of fresh air to a category of films long-cherished in Turkish cinema It’s hard not to feel a sense of déjà vu that you are being taken to the Turkish cinema of the 1950s upon reading the press release for last week’s release “Toprağa Uzanan Eller” (King of the Cotton), the debut feature of Ömer Can. The synopsis reveals that the protagonist is the eight-year-old Toprak who is cut off from his childhood, heading to the cotton fields as a seasonal worker.

Toprak’s older sister is married off to a much older man for a good amount of dowry. And to top the series of tragedies the siblings have to live through, their little sister Zeliha has become blind after suffering poliomyelitis. Children suffering onscreen was a familiar picture in 1950s’ Turkish cinema. Children and their misfortunes were the ultimate source of melodrama, bordering emotional exploitation.

The tragedies children had to face onscreen were always too large for their short lives. Most of them were abandoned by their parents, often born out of wedlock to ultimate shunning, left on the streets to fend for their own. Some of the titles will give you an idea, “Bırakılan Çocuk” (The Abandoned Child), “Evlat Acısı” (Loss of a Child), “Yetim Yavrular” (Orphan Babies), “Evlat Hasreti” (Missing the Child) and “Bir Yavrunun Gözyaşları” (Tears of a Baby). Not to be misled, some of the movies of the period with children in their titles didn’t...