GERMAN FILM FESTIVAL: In 2006, fresh off the career-defining one-two punch of the intense identity drama Head-On and the exhilarating music documentary Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul, German-born Turkish writer-director Fatih Akin travelled to his paternal grandparents’ village of Camburnu, near the Black Sea in northeastern Turkey, to film the denouement of the film that would become his greatest success to date, The Edge of Heaven.
an absorbing revelation on the extent of the democratic process in the more rural areas of Turkey
He had been there before, researching his family, and had become so smitten with the place he’d selected it for the location. But there was another reason to showcase the region: nearly a decade earlier, government officials had decreed a tip be installed on the site of an abandoned copper strip mine on the hill overlooking a tea plantation and, further down, the village itself. At the time much more famous in Turkey than in German, Akin turned his shock and anger at the project to action, and returned to begin filming in 2007 in hope of intimidating the officials into cancelling the project.
Despite promises of sturdy construction and the efficient treatment of wastewater, the town photographer discovers shoddy work on-site and questions the very design of the landfill, which to the naked eye looks like nothing more than a large pit lined with rocks covered with plastic.
And, sure enough, problems begin immediately. Wastewater sluices down through the tea fields into the village, dogs and birds scavenge the growing pile of garbage, and the stench becomes unbearable. Led by the crusading mayor, the townspeople begin to pressure politicians and the tip staff, with some confrontations becoming quite heated.
Akin is a filmmaker known for dogged determination and righteous passion, traits evident in every frame of Polluting Paradise. (The literal translation of the German title is Garbage in the Garden of Eden.) To ensure he captured the real-life human drama as it unfolded, he hastily taught the town photographer how to use a digital camera and instructed him to film whenever frictions flared. The tapes were then sent to Akin and his long-time editor Andrew Bird, who edited the footage for structure and pace.
Thus, given the sadly visual nature of the conflict, Polluting Paradise often plays like a conventional thriller. The villagers’ spiraling frustrations are interspersed with talking head interviews with government officials arranged by Akin himself. Significant to the filmmaker’s disciplined and unerring sense of story focus, an early cut of the film that featured him on-camera, a la Michael Moore, was tightened to remove him as he felt his presence was too distracting. (If only Moore would have such a revelation.)
In the end, Polluting Paradise is an absorbing revelation on the extent of the democratic process in the more rural areas of Turkey, as well as a committed call to arms that will resonate with anyone who appreciates the exercising of social justice in a real-world situation.
As for the tip itself, it is still there, though the government has mentioned the possibility of moving it to another location in the near future. Even if they do, the damage to Camburnu has been done. Though the garbage will remain in this Garden of Eden, Akin’s film stands as a bracing document of grass-roots advocacy.
