“Melancholy and Aggression”: In the Fade Examines Democracy’s Limitations and Human Capacity for Revenge

MM: Most of your movie deals with the question of Turkish immigrants and is somewhat like a kind of diaspora cinema. Is that something that you always wanted examine?

I try to get away with it from time to time. I mean, this film deals with that. The hero this time is a German lady, and both the antagonists and the protagonists are Germans. My previous film Goodbye Berlin was based on a very famous German teenage novel. It was completely different, but it also had an immigrant hero—a Russian immigrant. The world I’m living in is not a world of white people. It’s not like—you and me are talking in this photograph, and none of us are white. I don’t live in a white world.

MM: This year at TIFF we had Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s The Kings,  which was made in the United States with American actors. It’s interesting that Turkish directors are collaborating with international names and becoming more popular in Hollywood and international cinema.

It’s a globalized world, and Hollywood reflects that. Today, with all these electronic tools and possibilities, it’s very easy to collaborate. I never met my American composer Josh Homme in person. We talked three times on the phone and just had emails going back and forth. That was how we did it. Sometimes I have meetings for films and projects with people all around the world on Skype.

If you ask me to come to the United States and live there in the studio system, I’m not dying to do that, because I have a wife and kids. They have a social life, and I’m a family man. I cannot just do what I want to do. I’m not at that age anymore. I don’t think a lot about career strategies. Maybe I should, but I don’t think, “If I do this film, then I will reach the next level.” Some part of me thinks like that, but my heart is “No, I want to shoot this film.” “But nobody wants to see it!” “Yeah, I know, but I want to shoot this film.” I have to be true to myself.

MM: That’s also important, that in the American system you can’t always be true to yourself.

Maybe you can convince them. They still do great films. David Mackenzie’s Hell or High Water was a wonderful film. I liked that film a lot, because I like Westerns. The American cinema would interest me much more than the big budget material, which is not for me.

What is your next project?

I’m working on several projects. One is the Marlene Dietrich film with Diane. This is for television as a six-part series. I’m also writing a screenplay based on a novel which takes place in my hometown. It’s not about immigrants, but rather a serial killer in the 1970s. I bought the rights for that. I’m also writing something about the war in North Syria, in the Middle East, with Kurdish fighters, ISIS, and Turks. MM

In the Fade opens in theaters on December 27, 2017, courtesy of Magnolia Pictures. All images courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

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