'Ayla: The Daughter of War' is a real story of never-ending anticipation
Ayla: The Daughter of War is a 2017 movie directed by Can Okay. Set in the 1950s Korean war, the Turkish movie is the story of compassion and love. Despite being abominable for creating inauspicious atrocities, sometimes wars beget the altruistic inherent nature of people.
The movie is a real-life story of Turkish Army Sergeant Suleyman and his adopted daughter Ayla during the Korean War in the 1950s. Followed by a documentary by Kore Ayla (2010) the movie is directed by Can Okay. It was pre-screened for the first time in Turkey at Grand Pera Emek Movie Theatre by the Beyoğlu Municipality on the 60th anniversary of the friendship between Turkey and the Republic of Korea. Prominent actors like Çetin Tekindor, Ismail Hacioglu, Kyung-jin Lee were some of the major casts of this movie.
The movie belongs to the war and drama genre. Wars always created devastating experiences, mankind has ever gone through. But there is a saying by famous Roman philosopher Seneca, ‘Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity of kindnesses.’ Indeed, this movie is a perfect portrayal of that thought.
After the baleful incident of World War II, mankind was striving for peace but instead of that, the triumphant allied forces started colliding with one another. The communist bloc led by the USSR and the capitalist bloc led by the USA indulged themselves in another power struggle. It resulted in the cold war.
This cold war was initiated by waging the Korean War. Afterwards, these two blocks fought several proxy wars against each other in many parts of the world to establish hegemony as well as their ideology. Alike other wars, the Korean war was nothing but a story of human suffering, detachment of families, confiscation of people from the ancestral home. This war ultimately resulted in the division of Korea.
Again, likewise in other wars, it originated numerous tale of compassion. In popular culture movies like The Pianist (2002) or Saving Private Ryan (1997) told us the story of survival as well as saving a life. This movie is no different from those. Moreover, it’s a real story of a soldier’s struggle to protect the kid he found from the haystack. During the whole running time of 124 minutes, scenarios are sharply screen played by Yigit Guralp which will never let your eye move an inch.
While North Korea invaded South Korea in the 1950s, Turkey decided to send its troops to aid South Korea. Under the command of General Tahsin Yazici, 5090 soldiers were sent to the Republic of Korea. Sergeant Suleyman Dilbirligi, aged 25, was one of the thousands of Turkish soldiers who went to Korea willingly. Suleyman was a rattling guy who wanted to marry a pretty girl and settling with a standard livelihood. But to find adventure he acquiesced to that mission with his companion Ali who is another central figure of the movie.
One night while the Turkish unit was returning to the base after a bloody fight, Suleyman stumbled into the ground and noticed a bit of movement from the bush. Being stuck between two choices either its enemy or an animal, Suleyman found a five-year-old girl from the bushes shivering with cold and utmost fear. Between the atrocities of the war, the girl was abandoned by his family and the whole village was massacred.
Amidst of war, it was impossible to find the child’s family so that they brought her to the camp and gave her a Turkish name Ayla which means like the moon. Soon, Ayla became the apple of the eye of everyone living in the army camp. She started calling Suleyman Baba, which is a father in Turkish and his other colleagues became her uncles. That’s how the bonafide generous love story initiates. Though Suleyman was not his biological father despite his affection towards her was more than that.
Being a paramount symbol of a father Suleyman took care of Ayla for 15 months. Then the trouble started which will lead him to a dilemma either returning to Turkey or living in Korea.
Getting stuck in this labyrinth, will Suleyman become able to be reunited with Ayla? How long they have to wait for each other? To know the answers we need to watch that movie. Indeed, it was a true example of love, kindness and humanity.
Despite being abominable for creating inauspicious atrocities, sometimes wars beget the altruistic inherent nature of people. This movie is not different from that. A soldier task is not always taking life on the battlefield, sometimes saving becomes more exigent. The famous movies from the war genre Hacksaw Ridge (2016) may be cited as an example.
Nevertheless, the following movie delineated the strong affinity between father and children distressingly. For instance, in the movie Train to Busan (2016), where a father ran on the whole movie to protect her daughter from the zombies. Similarly, here, the protagonist ran all along to save his beloved. It was not only about protecting the child’s life the latter half of the movie portrayed a scenario of anticipation.
The movie got an IMDB rating of 8.4/10 and was selected as the Turkish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards. Although it was not nominated it placed itself as one of the best films in the joint production of South Korea and Turkey. The movie has been appreciated in both countries. When you will look at the list of top-rated Korean or Turkish movie, you are going to find it on the top tier.