The Needle

In Turkey, a mother searches for her vanished son. Based on true events, “The Needle” tells the story of the Saturday Mothers — women who for years have gathered in public to keep the memory of their abducted relatives alive. Its protagonist is one of them. An animated film without words.

I have a long working partnership with the illustrator and filmmaker Ceylan Beyoglu; we have worked together on a number of her films, “The Needle” among them. For the story of the Saturday Mothers I wrote a score that moves between melancholy remembrance and the sheer dread of loss — the loss of places, and of loved ones, under a spreading dictatorship. As with all of Ceylan Beyoglu’s films, this one does without words, and so the music carries both the emotional weight of the action and the line of communication between the characters. It shifts between tone and noise. A small chamber ensemble plays: E-flat clarinet, double bass, piano and timpani. Very high and very low, with the piano between them as the connecting harmonic element. Everything is recorded very close, to create a great immediacy and to sharpen the urgency. For the closing credits we set Orhan Veli Kanık’s poem “Anlatamıyorum” to music and recorded it with the singer Şeyda Taşbilek — a text about the limits of language, about what cannot be said.