On the Way to School – Okul yolunda (2008)

Directed by: Ozgür Dogan, Orhan Eskikoy | 81 minutes | drama, documentary

This interesting and appealing documentary gives a nice picture of the attempts of the young, recently graduated teacher Emre Aydin to teach at the primary school in the Kurdish village of Sanliurfa. A short intro with text indicates that between eleven and fifteen million Kurds live in Turkey. Although they oppose it, education is compulsory in Turkish.

The content of the documentary consists of following Emre (and his students) and simply recording what is happening. It is the oldest and simplest method from the documentary maker’s handbook and has been used effectively here. Makers Ozgür Dogan and Orhan Eskikoy show themselves as keen observers and observe the necessary distance. There is no voice-over or an omniscient narrator and the conclusions and opinions should be taken by the viewer themselves. And it is so refreshing not to be presented with nagging opinions from the makers themselves.

The Turkish government’s policy to make Turkish compulsory in school is controversial for the Kurds, but understandable from a central government’s point of view. The viewer can judge for himself about usefulness and necessity. Dogan and Eskikoy also chose not to let Emre speak separately and to use him as the narrator. In this way ‘On the Way to School’ remains a registration and not an interpretation. It should of course be noted that the material used was selected from countless hours of filming and carefully edited. The opinion of the filmmakers is heard in this way and some manipulation of the viewer takes place. Nevertheless, an accessible and often sparkling picture emerges of Emre’s life for a year in southeastern Turkey.

“Protagonist” Emre reacts uninhibitedly to the presence of cameras and the same goes for the children after a while (apart from a sporadic shy look in the lens) On the first day we see Emre a bit nervous rearranging the tables in the simple classroom with the inevitable portrait of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, under the Turkish flag. To his surprise, however, no one shows up and he has to go looking for his students. Fortunately, they soon (the next day? Or does it take longer?) show up, in neat blue jackets. Not all of them, but Emre is initially happy that more than half of the students show up.

Moreover, he will not teach one class, but all classes (from class one to class four – there are no students in class five). The language barrier is great, as is the cultural one, and the interaction between the teacher from Denizli in the west (halfway between Izmir and Antalya) and the villagers in Sanliurfa is minimal at first. The makers present these thresholds in a beautiful way, which is often accompanied by the necessary humor. Highlights include Emre’s apparent mounting desperation to properly capture the names of his students and the scene in which a parent at the parents’ evening translates the hapless teacher’s words into Kurdish very differently for two mothers present.

But often scenes are both humorous and tragic. Emre regularly runs into a wall of incomprehension, because the children simply do not understand him or because they do not understand the meaning of words. Not everything is filmed in the classroom: we also see children practicing their words at home with the help of picture books and these scenes show the great poverty of the region. Electricity cannot be taken for granted, nor is running water. The inhabitants mainly live from agriculture and have little or no access to goods other than the necessities of life. Emre’s contact with the outside world is mainly through telephone conversations with his mother (which do not always go smoothly in terms of technical connection), in which he tells her about his frustrations, disappointments and positive experiences.

‘On the Way to School’ is a wonderful example of expert documentary work, which takes the viewer on a special journey full of cultural and linguistic misunderstandings. In short, a documentary that is heartwarming and educational at the same time.