Two British film-makers have shone a light on a campaigning lawyer and her clients in an expose of misogyny and dangerous politics
Once, not that long ago, Kubra and Arzu were healthy young Turkish mothers, looking forward to raising their children. Today, sadly, this is no longer all these charismatic, determined women have in common. They are now both among the many damaged survivors of violent attacks at the hands of husbands who believed it was their right to inflict potentially lethal injury on their wives.
This autumn, the two mothers are the impressive stars of Dying to Divorce, a British-made documentary, out last week, that has just been selected to represent Britain at the Oscars as the official entry in the Best International Feature Film category. The film is a startling, sensitively made exposé of the murderous misogyny and dangerous politics behind an epidemic of femicide in Turkey, a country where an astonishing one in three women is subjected to some form of domestic violence.
