Screen can reveal the first trailer for Brother’s Keeper (Okul Tıraşı), Ferit Karahan’s Turkish-Romanian feature which has been selected in the Panorama strand of this year’s Berlin Film Festival.

The film (previously titled Deskmate) follows two friends, Yusef and Memo, at a boarding school for Kurdish boys secluded in the mountains of Eastern Anatolia. When Memo falls mysteriously ill, Yusuf is forced to struggle through the bureaucratic obstacles put up by the school’s repressive authorities to try to help his friend.

Italy-based Intramovies is handling International sales. The film is co-production between Turkish producer Kanat Doğramaci of Asteros Film with Romania’s Tudor Alexandru Craciun of Flama Booking. It was selected for the First Cut+ Programme of Karlovy Vary’s Eastern Promises industry strand last year, and was developed through the Jerusalem Film Lab, Antalia’s Work In Progress and Tallinn’s Baltic Event International Work in Progress.

Karahan’s previous work includes The Fall From Heaven, which won the best first film at the Ankara International Film Festival in 2014.

Topics