‘My Name Is Happy’: IDFA Review

Dirs: Nick Read, Ayse Toprak. UK/Turkey. 2022. 82mins

In 2020, a United Nations Office on Drugs And Crime (UNODC) report revealed there had been around 47,000 cases of femicide reported worldwide in the previous 12 months — and that there had been only marginal changes to this annual figure over the past decade. This grim statistic appears on screen at the end of My Name Is Happy, which effectively spotlights violence against women through the experiences of one survivor, Turkish singer Mutlu Kaya.

 Multu hasn’t only rediscovered her voice, but is using it as a powerful, defiant instrument of protest

Playing in IDFA’s frontlight strand, the film joins a slew of documentaries about this subject, and bears specific similarities to Chloe Fairweather’s Turkey-set Dying To Divorce, selected in 2021 as the UK’s Oscar entry for Best International Feature. Yet there can never be enough screen time given to raising awareness of this issue; that My Name Is Happy does so via such a compelling protagonist should serve it well during a Bafta-qualifying UK cinema release in early 2023, and when the film makes its way to Channel 4. 

In 2015, 19 year-old Kurdish woman Mutlu Kaya had the world at her feet. A talented singer, she had been plucked from her job in a school canteen in the conservative town of Ergani, southeast Turkey, and had made it through to the final of popular Turkish talent show Sesi Cok Guzel. Before she could embrace the opportunities offered by her burgeoning stardom — she planned to use the show’s prize money to go to college — Mutlu was shot in the head at point blank range by Veysi Ercan, incensed that she had refused his marriage proposal. 

In a coma for months, and with a bullet lodged permanently in her brain, Mutlu had to relearn how to walk, speak and, crucially, sing; an arduous, frustrating journey documented fly-on-the-wall style through home videos interspersed with more recent footage and interviews, and anchored by Mutlu’s candid narration.

Directors Nick Read (Bolshoi Babylon) and Ayse Toprak (Mr Gay Syria) first met Mutlu in 2016, as she was making her recovery, but didn’t begin filming until 2020 — the year in which, shockingly, Mutlu’s older sister and closest supporter Dilek was killed by a jealous partner. This patience has resulted in a level of trust evident on screen. Family members speak frankly about their despair at both Turkey’s legal system, which does nothing to deter femicide (Mutlu’s attacker only got 15 years in prison, it took an agonising year-long trial to bring Dilek’s murderer to justice), and an outdated patriarchal society in which such violent misogyny is allowed to fester.

There’s perhaps not enough time spent on fleshing out Dilek’s backstory — she was, by all accounts, a feisty free spirit, who campaigned for women’s rights — but this is Mutlu’s story, and she has firm authorship of it. That Mutlu means “happy” is an irony she herself points out at but, although she understandably laments all that has been lost to her, she doesn’t succumbs to it. Having reinvented herself as a TikTok celebrity, using her platform to campaign against femicide and write a song about her experiences — “Let people hear me coming,” she sings — Multu hasn’t only rediscovered her voice, but is using it as a powerful, defiant instrument of protest.