Film Absurdistan

Absurdistan is a romantic comedy based on a 2001 Turkish newspaper article in which women went on strike, refusing to have sex until the men of the village fixed the water pipes.

Veit Helmer’s inventive, allegorical comedy introduces us to Absurdistan, a once beautiful, now utterly desolate, land. In a water-starved village, two childhood sweethearts, Aya and Temelko, await the date (foretold by Aya’s grandmother) that a perfect celestial alignment will bless their first night of love. An intrepid inventor, Temelko plans to repair the aging water pipe, but the apathetic older men scoff at his designs. The women, fed up with the men’s inaction, take matters into their own hands and declare a strike. No water, no sex. The gender lines are drawn, reinforced with barbed wire, and our young lovers find themselves on opposite sides of a fast-escalating feud.

The imprint of Helmer’s imagination is ubiquitous. He directs like a kid tearing through his toy chest. Mechanically obsessed, Helmer filters life through outlandish, homespun contraptions. If Aya’s first night of love is to elevate her soul, in Helmer’s world, the flight comes courtesy of a rickety scrap-heap rocket atop rusty barrels of kerosene.

Brilliantly satirical (here are villagers who build an elaborate aqueduct, and then collectively forget how it works), ever witty, and dipping self-reflexively into myriad cinematic styles, Absurdistan contains the signature theatricality of Helmer’s many shorts and earlier feature, Tuvalu. It’s a philosophic parable that glides weightlessly along (no doubt suspended by pulleys and ropes hooked to a donkey). Welcome to Absurdistan.
- Sundance Film Guide

A group of village women take up a sex strife that threatens a young couple's first night together. 

- Yahoo! Movies

This inventive and allegorical comedy centers on two childhood sweethearts who seem destined for one another until the women of their isolated village, angered by male indifference toward the water shortage, go on a sex strike that threatens the young couple’s first night of love.

 - realTVFilms.com

The Idea for the film is based upon a small newspaper article: In 2001, women in the Turkish village Sirt went on strike. As long as the men didn’t repair the water pipes, they refused to have sex. Veit was fascinated by the comic and dramatic potential of the strike. Together with Gordan Mihic („Black Cat, White cat“) and Zaza Buadze he developed the script for a love story between two teenagers in the time of war between man and women ...

- VeitHelmer.de

ExP: Linda Kornemann
Pr: Graham Broadbent, Peter Czerin
Ci: George Beridze
Ed: Vincent Assmann