When you see the poster for “My Names is Batlir, Not Butler”, odds are you noticed the young man with a large head that looks straight out of a comic book. I don’t know what you expect such a movie experience to be, but I’m telling you you’re probably wrong.
Director, Stare Yildirim, describes herself as a high empath. “Which is very painful most of the time, because I can feel the sufferings of other creators more than a regular person,” she says. She uses this strong emotion to tell the story of a man struggling to accept his himself because of a physical deformity while creating an interesting world around him.
As Yildirim will point out, this world-building comes from the script going through many iterations and different people having input from when she first came across the story.
“We just had the idea of a man with an oversized head and rewrote it together with the same writers, Kerem Pilavcı and Gökçe Eyüboğlu…The screenplay had 2 films in it, and the one about the boy with an oversized head was only 20% of it…We rewrote a new story around the idea of a boy with an oversized head. When Volkan Girgin joined the team, Gökçe and Kerem were already working on other projects and they have never met Volkan…I had to be the catalyzer and blend their tone and style in a way that it would look like it was written by one person.
“The important part is, I made sure nobody feels neglected… If you close your ears to what they are saying then it means you are blinded.”
She describes the U.S. as her second home, having gone to film school at UCLA and working as a script supervisor, production coordinator, and line producer in Los Angeles before moving back to her home country of Turkey where she had to get accustomed to the film industry there.
“When I came to Turkey, I had to start from scratch. I needed to see how things work on film sets. [I] accepted to work on a period film…There was chaos on the set but somehow within that chaos they could manage to shoot the film. Insane. I’m the first script supervisor in [Turkey]…There is no such position called script supervisor in [Turkey]…Here [the] production team doesn’t get involved a lot on the set…The communication between AD team and Production team got better in the recent years. However, when I first came to Turkey, it was very chaotic.”
The feeling of being an outsider in both the US, and then back in Turkey, helped her connect with the story. There are many scenes in the film where Batlir is alone and actor, Can Sipahi, seemingly has no one to play off of. That can be difficult enough, but this came with more challenges because of the production schedule. Make-up artist, Tristan Versluis, was working on another project. This meant all the scenes where Batlir doesn’t wear his beanie (including his solitary scenes) were shot in the first five days of production. As Yildirim put it, “He was just getting into his character. Ideally it would be better if we could shoot these scenes towards the end of our shooting schedule.”
They took this time to build his character through the development of their director-actor relationship as well as some improvisation. Sipahi’s job was further complicated due to the fact he was simultaneously on a show where he played a prince. He was a strong and confident prince, then ran across the lot to be insecure and lonely Batlir. “We even worked on his body language. He was walking like a prince shoulders high and standing straight…I remember calling him from in front of the monitor ‘Caannn you are not a prince. Remember you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders and you are a loser.’”
Between her own life experiences, the story development, and her relationship with the actors, the story was taking off. Yildirim’s passion can be seen in the final product. There was a lot of inspiration to draw from, but she drew strength for the project from one person in particular.
“I got inspired a lot from my auntie who had a humpback due to an accident she had when she was a baby…I was in LA, studying film and my auntie has helped me a lot to convince my dad to support my education in Cinema. She made sure I reached the USA and then she died… Until the day she died, my auntie was always smiling, always positive, caring…Kids have no mercy and they made fun of her a lot, she didn’t give up and she became a kindergarten teacher. She decided to educate the kids who pointed fingers at her. I’ve never seen her being mad at the kids who made fun of her, but she won their hearts so much that those kids loved and admired her…I’ve never seen her complaining about her humpback or feeling like she has a different body than rest of us.”
From talking with Stare Yildirim, I could recognize the care and passion that was put into the film, and that’s the message she wants young filmmakers to take away. Find a story you’re passionate about, because it’s a tiring, demanding job. For her, My Name is Batlir, Not Butler was a story that needed to be told. If you think it looks weird, the film is probably for you.
What drives her? The child in her that doesn’t want to grow up. Without that, she’d be a lawyer. From her experience, the world needs the same lesson he does and use it to make a better place.
“I want to tell stories and hopefully plant seeds of hope and love in people which is a good beginning for a good future.”
**This interview was conducted for the 2018 Winter Film Awards. The article's original site can be viewed here. https://winterfilmawards.com/2018/02/batlir-the-story-that-must-be-told-from-stare-yildirim/?fbclid=IwAR1iPmejntZH61H96FtUHyqYfMWxmq77KiDXxzD_9aDX8r2Ex5Rbn5jNIrY
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