The film is based on a true story of a woman who lives with her eight children in Midyat. Midyat is located on the south of the Turkish province Mardin. It is located in a hilly land scape where it was difficult to find electricity and water. The film is set in 1956 and it reminds modern audiences that women’s lives in Turkey in the 1950s were not free.
The director wanted to point out the difference between now and 58 years ago. Xate (Demet Akbag) is the wife of a mayor and she is illiterate. Xate wants children to go to school but the school is far away from the country, therefore, she brings them every day by carriage. But some parents were in two minds about this because their Kurdish speaking children were being educated in Turkish. The director wanted to make a point to the audience that studying and being educated is very important as some people do not have those options.
The films strength is that it brings out what life was like in the Kurdish side of Turkey in the 1950s. For instance, we learn how run away girls escaping arranged marriages were hidden from their families. This still happens today in Turkey and in different Muslim countries. Xate becomes the mayor when her husband died which was never the case in a Kurdish village that is why people were against her. She was uneducated and she could not write or read at all. The community become angry as she is the mayor they reported her to an inspector to come and check if she is the right person for a mayor. In the end of