Translating Ulysses

Translating Ulysses

70min, 2023, The Netherlands/Turkey

Aylin Kuryel & Fırat Yücel

2023 DOK.fest München

Kawa Nemir is like a walking dictionary of the Kurdish language. He incessantly records new words and idioms in his mother tongue. He considers language his home as he wanders from one exile to another. With its vast, infinite range of words, symbols, and anti-colonial resonance, translating James Joyce’s Ulysses into Kurdish becomes his burning passion. Leaving political turmoil and his loved ones behind he moves from Turkey to the Netherlands. Kawa takes refuge at Anne Frank’s former house in Amsterdam, where she started writing her diary, now serving as a residence for exiled writers. Will he be able to publish the translation of Ulysses?

About the Director

Aylin Kuryel

Aylin Kuryel is an Assistant Professor in Literary and Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam. Her research areas are nationalism, image politics, aesthetics/resistance, and the politics of emotions. She is the (co-)editor of Utanca Bakmak (Looking at Shame, Cogito, 2023), Sıkıntı Var (Essays on Boredom, İletişim Press, 2020), Being Jewish in Turkey: A Dictionary of Experiences (Türkiye’de Yahudi Olmak: Bir Deneyim Sözlüğü, Iletisim Press, 2017), Küresel Ayaklanmalar Çağında Direniş ve Estetik (Resistance and Aesthetics in the Age of Global Uprisings, İletişim Press, 2015), and Cultural Activism: Practices, Dilemmas and Possibilities (Rodopi, 2010). She has been involved in projects as an artist and is working as a documentary director and producer. Among her documentaries are The City and the Messiah (2024), Translating Ulysses (2023), A Defense (2021), CemileSezgin (2020), The Balcony and Our Dreams (2020), Heads and Tails (2018), Welcome Lenin (2016).

Fırat Yücel

Fırat Yücel is a documentary director and editor who lives and works in Amsterdam and Istanbul. He is also one of the curators behind the video series of Altyazı Fasikül: Free Cinema (a platform of Altyazı Cinema Association) dedicated to supporting political film and video makers at risk in Turkey and elsewhere. His work centers around collective filmmaking and resistance against censorship; mainly using the forms and strategies of video-essay, archival/found footage, and desktop-documentary. Welcome Lenin (2016), Only Blockbusters Left Alive (2016), Audience Emancipated: The Struggle for the Emek Movie Theater (2016), Head and Tails (2018), and March 8, 2020: A Memoir (2020) are among his documentaries. The anthology film for which he served as artistic director, Seen Unseen: An Anthology of (Auto)Censorship (2024), premiered internationally at the 54th International Film Festival Rotterdam and was screened at MoMA Doc Fortnight, as well as CPH:DOX. He was a fellow at the BAK Utrecht’s Fellowship for Situated Practice: 2023-2024 with his research on self-censorship in cinema. His latest short, happiness (2025), premiered at Visions du Réel, is part of a trilogy on desktop cinema.