The film's title is suggestive, as the sun (alongside the fire) is an ancient Kurdish symbol of the Yazidi religion, also illustrated on the Kurdish national flag and thus symbolising freedom and enlightenment for the Kurds today. Thus "seeing the sun" means, in other words, liberating Kurdistan from the Turkish regime, among the others. But interestingly, the one character who literally "sees the sun", the homosexual boy, is being killed. This, I believe, is a message to the Kurds (and the core idea of the film), that only in death will they get their freedom, reminding us of the Turkish racism of "a good Kurd is a dead Kurd". This Turkish association of (Kurdish) freedom and death was also used in the film "Eskiya" (1996). It is worth noting that the film was released in a time when the Turkish aggression towards Iraqi Kurdistan was at its peak. Some months earlier had the Turkish army walked in that part of Kurdistan (under the pretext of fighting the PKK), calling it "Operation the Sun".
Since the time of the creation of the Turkish republic in 1920s and the selling of Ataturk as a "moderniser", Kurdish culture has been portrayed as primitive and no-good, hence "happy is that is a Turk". In other words, "all will be done to make you unhappy if you insist on your Kurdishness" and this film plays that part well. The Kurdish characters and families in the film are not unhappy because of the Turkish state in Kurdistan but because of their own culture, illustrated among others by the fathers wish to have a son (as opposed to a daughter), and of their own people, the PKK. Despite all the reports of human rights organisations on the contrary, the Turkish army is portrayed as loving and caring with no option but to "ask them" to leave.
This film makes no contribution whatsoever to the understanding and thus resolution of the complex issue of the Kurdish Question. On the contrary, by dealing with it through the traditional Turkish racism and anti-Kurdism, the film helps to prolong the Turkish colonialism in Kurdistan, doing no-one any good.
Since the time of the creation of the Turkish republic in 1920s and the selling of Ataturk as a "moderniser", Kurdish culture has been portrayed as primitive and no-good, hence "happy is that is a Turk". In other words, "all will be done to make you unhappy if you insist on your Kurdishness" and this film plays that part well. The Kurdish characters and families in the film are not unhappy because of the Turkish state in Kurdistan but because of their own culture, illustrated among others by the fathers wish to have a son (as opposed to a daughter), and of their own people, the PKK. Despite all the reports of human rights organisations on the contrary, the Turkish army is portrayed as loving and caring with no option but to "ask them" to leave.
This film makes no contribution whatsoever to the understanding and thus resolution of the complex issue of the Kurdish Question. On the contrary, by dealing with it through the traditional Turkish racism and anti-Kurdism, the film helps to prolong the Turkish colonialism in Kurdistan, doing no-one any good.