In the Blind Spot

In the Blind Spot (Im toten Winkel) is a 2023 German mystery thriller film directed and written by Ayşe Polat. Starring Katja Bürkle, Ahmet Varlı, Çağla Yurga and Aybi Era, the film is about Melek, a 7–year–old Turkish girl and her father Zafer, who are drawn into a complex net of conspiracy, paranoia and generational trauma. It is selected in Encounter at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival, where it had its world premiere on 19 February 2023.

Synopsis
In a remote Kurdish village, in northeastern Turkey, a documentary is shot by German film crew. They spot an old woman performing ritual to memory of her missing son. In the village, Melek, a 7-year-old Turkish girl lives, whose nanny is the Kurdish translator of the film crew. Zafer, her father works for an ominous group. When she apparently get haunted by unknown power, he gets caught between loyalty to them and fear for his family's well-being. This eventually developes into a ruinous force. The film unravels a complex net of conspiracy, paranoia and generational trauma.

Cast

 * Katja Bürkle as Simone
 * Ahmet Varlı as Zafer
 * Çağla Yurga as Melek
 * Aybi Era as Leyla
 * Maximilian Hemmersdorfer as Christian
 * Nihan Okutucu as Sibel
 * Tudan Ürper as Hatice
 * Mutallip Müjdeci as Hasan
 * Rıza Akın as Burhan
 * Aziz Çapkurt as Eyüp

Production
The film was shot from 24 April 2021 to 24 June 2021 in Turkey and Hamburg.

Reception
Jay Weissberg for The Film Verdict wrote, "A bold and chilling political thriller of shifting perspectives in which the weight of state-sanctioned terror begins to crush a security agent in eastern Turkey, where trauma and paranoia rip apart the social fabric."

Joseph Fahim for Middle East Eye wrote: "A political thriller imbued with scorching commentary, this is Polat’s finest film to date and is a snapshot of a lawless place governed by xenophobia and paranoia ... The use of the camera, both as a tool of surveillance and as a recorder of repressed truths, reflects the hazards of image-making in a culture terrified - yet fascinated - by what can be and what is shown."

Vladan Petkovic for Cineuropa wrote, "A mystery-thriller with Rashomon-style storytelling, German-Kurdish filmmaker Ayşe Polat's In the Blind Spot sets up an intriguing premise ... The film combines its key cinematography with smartphone videos and hidden-camera footage, which makes it feel expansive and rich on the surface, but the overly tidy editing makes the film's structure too obvious, stripping it of movie magic. On the other hand, the city where the story takes place is an excellent setting that combines magnificent ancient ruins with dark, narrow alleyways and abandoned construction sites. As such, it is an ideal background both for the mystery and for the overarching theme of transgenerational trauma ..."