Dir: Volkan Uce | Turkey, Belgium Doc 83′
“The Angel of Death is on vacation” complains a mortuary attendant in an early scene of this darkly humorous Turkish film, a third outing for documentarian Volkan Uce, screening at this year’s Rotterdam Film Festival.
From preparing bodies to packaging them in coffins for transportation, we learn a great deal about the funeral business Muslim-style, all from a man who is trying to make money from death while respecting his clients’ dignity.
Ten years ago Tayfun Arslan’o set up ‘Hizir Funerals’ to serve Belgium’s Turkish Muslim community and his enthusiasm is a delight to behold. When not dealing with postmortem paraphernalia, we see him comforting grief-stricken wives or sympathetically explaining death to a bereaved young client, or even selling coffins in bulk.
In the evening he relaxes by reading and playing monopoly with his daughters: he’s busily recruiting them for his lucrative business model – when the Grim Reaper comes calling Tayfun charges 3-4000 euros a pop for providing a decent farewell, and there are 400,000 Muslims in Belgium: Just do the Maths.
At a ‘death’ trade fair, Tayfun gleefully peruses the stands to discover the many different kinds of coffins and hearses on display, but also there are weird accessories for sale, such as ‘in coffin’ pads that absorb the dead baby’s smell, intended for grieving mothers.
When crowds gather on the eve of an Eid celebration, Tayfun is there handing out water and promoting his biz to the faithful. There is also transportation to consider – if you or your loved one dies and wants to be repatriated to Turkey Tayfun has an onsite liaison counterpart. His energy is impressive and he comforts and assures the clients while calmly trousering their money. Death is a captive market, a miserable business and clients are usually too distraught and emotional to bargain or strike a deal as they are led to the slaughter, money-wise.
Back in Turkey, Tayfun dedicates a quiet moment to lay flowers at the cemetery where his extended family rest in peace. His tears are shed for the first time when he explains his obligation to go back to Belgium for the sake of his kids. Tayfun is not only there on a fact finding mission, he uses the trip back home to network with business associates; one is offering air-conditioned coffins for repatriation, another complains that the centralised system of channelling bodies through to a main mortuary for processing is wreaking havoc with his more personal one to one approach. To help him out Tayfun offers him facebook friendship.
Bizarrely, 2m² is both droll and faintly amusing, full of fascinating discoveries without overloading the detail. And there’s a surprise in store in the finale.
2m² part of the BIG SCREEN COMPETITION at IFFR Rotterdam | Feb 1st, 16:50 / 5:50pm CET