My Sweet Pepper Land

Baran is a war hero of the Kurdish independence struggle, but since 2003 he has watched his newly formed state fall victim to bureaucracy. Instead of paperwork, Baran seeks practice: the fight against corruption and crime. He gets himself transferred to the Turkish-Iraqi borderlands, where he meets the idealistic and patriotic teacher Govend. But he also finds crime there, and quickly gets into a tangle with local crime boss Aziz Aga.... "The political tone of the prologue soon dies away in 'My Sweet Pepper Land' in favor of a well-oiled genre rhythm. Saleem uses the Western to depict power relations on the fringes of civilization. (...) His clear repertoire of types and motifs lends itself to social micro-studies. In 'My Sweet Pepper Land' it is an old topos of the genre that motivates the plot: the aging gunslinger who has to take up arms one last time. In this, Saleem's film, like the Italo variant, has something almost late-Western about it." (Andreas Busche in DIE ZEIT)