TranAsia train carries a wagon full of stories every week between two neighboring countries Turkey and Iran.
In the name of our acquaintance with the ones that are so close to us, our interactions, the mutual words survive in our languages…
TransAsya
Turkey / 2008 / 72’ / Turkish, Persian, English / English Subtitle
The film tells the story of the TransAsia train that operates between Istanbul and Tehran along with its historical background, passengers, voyages, the lives constructed in four-day time in its wagons.
TranAsia is different than all the other trains. Because it travels between two Eastern countries whose relationship revolve around the border line between alliance and enmity; and who both have a long-established historical heritage with their coups, change of regime, everlasting adjustments and both are, in political terms, defined as “geostrategical”, “geopolitical” and both have not been given a break by the West. One of these countries is Iran on behalf of whom thriller scenarios have being written for a while . The claim about Iran “manufacturing nuclear weapons” has kept Iran under scrutiny and threat of making use of military force, constantly. The other is the “geopolitical” one, Turkey, each problem of whom has been argued worldwide thanks to the course of joining the EU. Beside all these, the people of these two countries alienate each other despite their mutual values, mutual past and being the oldest neighbors.
The film intends to tell the minimal but original stories of TransAsia passengers along with these political sayings and atmosphere they are in. It tends to indicate the reflection of the way of the world on the TransAsia passengers and on their stories.
The objective of the film is to find out; how Turkish and Persian passengers in a compartment, on a four-day journey, construct their lives and handle it, upon which codes they act, at what they laugh, how they entertain themselves, what the common words in their languages and mutual melodies in their ears are. The aim is to ask questions on what is really going on through little details of life, away from all the manipulated things surrounding us.