My Name is Happy
The Kurdish teenager Mutlu Kaya gives voice to an inspiring Anglo-Turkish documentary about femicide.
We have here a documentary likely to have a warm appeal. It's a film about a Kurdish teenager named Mutlu Kaya and we soon learn from her that the name Mutlu means happy. Consequently, the film’s title is not as mawkish as it may sound and, indeed, this is a work which, in telling Mutlu Kaya’s own story, proves to have a wider raison d’être in that it is a cry of protest regarding the extent to which femicide occurs in Turkey. That justice is slow, if it can be obtained at all, is also part of the film’s message.
This could suggest that My Name Is Happy is a thoroughly grim film, but that aspect is balanced by the fact that, despite what happened to Mutlu, her story is an inspirational one. In 2015 at the age of nineteen she had set out to compete as a singer on ‘Turkey's Got Talent’ and, looking back in the film’s opening scene, she speaks of her love of music, declaring “I knew I wouldn't stop, that I’d put my struggle into my song. Perhaps my voice will be heard”. She is referring to the fact that in March 2015, following her success in the first round of the talent competition and just a few days before the final, she became the victim of a man who had hoped to marry her and who, angry at her refusal, took a gun and shot her. A bullet was left in her brain and this documentary by Ayşe Toprak and Nick Read shows her determined fight to recover greatly aided by her family and not least by her sister Dilek. It shows too how the experience led to her being becoming so concerned with the victimisation of other women in Turkey (one such being a member of her own family) that she became an activist using TikTok to express her views and to attain a following.
Shot in widescreen and colour, My Name Is Happy was shot over the years as well as including archive footage. The early scenes emphasise the importance of music within the Kaya family and introduce us to her parents and to several of her siblings (she was one of eight children). The approach adopted by the filmmakers is hardly sophisticated or subtle (when Mutlu is describing being shot they can't resist adding the sound of a gun being fired), but that in no way prevents the film from having a simple, direct appeal. The early footage relating to the talent show in Istanbul engages in a way that may especially attract teenage viewers and, indeed, My Name Is Happy strikes me as being particularly useful as an involving film which could bring the issue of femicide to the attention of older school audiences. For the most part it plays out as a personal tale with Mutlu at its centre, but it ends with statistics relating not only to Turkey but also to the wider world which underline the fact that the relevance of this film is far less limited than one might naively suppose.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring Mutlu Kaya, Hanim Kaya, Songul Kaya, Mehmet Kaya, Hakan Kaya, Mohammed Kaya, Dilek Kaya.
Dir Ayşe Toprak and Nick Read, Pro Nick Read and Mahmut Kaya, Ph Meryem Yavuz Arik, Ed Anna Price, Music Smith & Elms.
October Films/Red Zed Films/Harovel Films-Autlook Filmsales.
82 mins. UK/Turkey. 2022. UK Rel: 10 February 2023. No Cert.
