In the documentary film Close Up the Kurdish director Yüksel Yavuz creates a connection between his personal story of immigration and the political development of Turkey.
In this he starts on a personal journey which takes him from Hamburg through Stockholm to Turkey, ending in the north of Iraq, in the refugee camp Maxmur in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Along the journey he meets his parents and old friends, some of whom went to the mountains to become guerrilla fighters, or others who had to endure their military service in the Turkish army.
One of the main protagonists is the intellectual Dr. Ismail Beşikçi, who because of his academic research on the Kurdish culture had to spend 18 years in jail. Then there is Abdulkadir Algan who fought as a counter-guerrilla in the ‘dirty war’ against the civil population for some years. (Quelle: Mitosfilm)