GLEAMING LIGHT

Turkish, German, Armenian. A family saga set in three cultures, full of lustre, tragedy and violence.

When Kaan, a composer from Berlin, travels to Istanbul on a scholarship residence, his whole world is split in two: he is unexpectedly and markedly affected by the trauma his grandmother suffered. Her family was eradicated during the genocide on the Armenians.

Kaan begins to remember: his grandparents, she Armenian, he Turkish, who achieved affluence during the years of the republic under Atatürk, only to then lose it all again; his mother, who left her Turkish homeland behind for a German man; and his own childhood, visits to his grandparents by the Black Sea that tasted of green beans and salty fish, that sounded like the warmth of the Baglama and that shone in the colours of the waves … it all held music for the boy.

And while Kaan tells his story, he is gripped by the desire for revenge: on a Turkish president who, more than a hundred years after it happened, still continues to deny the first large-scale modern-day genocide.