“For whom did you make this film“ was one of the first questions of a Kurdish man during the Q&A. That was exactly the same question I asked myself when I first saw Reha Erdem's JÎN at the 63rd Berlin Film Festival. But this was only one of a series of other questions.
In his film, Mr. Erdem chose a female hero named Jȋn, which can mean woman or life in Kurdish, depending on the circumflex over the letter i. In the beginning, Jȋn leaves her guerrilla group and we can only speculate the reason for her decision. In different dialogues with others we understand that she wants to visit her grandmother in Izmir. But it's not clear whether she needs to say this in order to have an excuse to be where she is (i.e. bus or other vehicles) or where she wants to go (i.e. Izmir) or/and to hide her past guerrilla activities in the mountains. Also, dramaturgically, this unclarity is quite problematic as the audience doesn't understand the hero's clear motives.
It is impossible for Jȋn to leave the mountains for two reasons: the first barrier is an invisible border, which pushes her back every time she wants to escape. The  Turkish Gendarme pulls her out of the bus during routine checks as Jȋn possesses no ID-card. They salute the passengers when they get into the bus, they ask them friendly ('lütfen') for their ID's. If you ever lived or passed this region you will know this image does not correspond to reality for the Kurdish people. The friendly or let's say neutral appearance of the Turkish soldiers is one of the key questions in this film. In another scene we see a naïve young Turkish soldier who has been injured during a bombing in the mountains and who is nursed by Jȋn. He says to her that inshallah they will meet again in a tea-garden in Çanakkale and have a tea together. This dialogue is so odd, that it does not wonder that some people in the cinema can't hide their reaction to this naïve wish with laughter.
Jȋn gets arrested and she is confronted with the second barrier: whenever she lets behind the mountains and arrives at the plain land she gets sexually harassed by men. The most abusive ones are the Kurdish man, marked by their Kurdish accent. An Kurdish interpreter for example who is been charged by the Turkish Jandarma to get information from the young girl, because they suspect her to be involved in terroristic activities, tries to abuse her sexually in the prison in the presence of another old Kurdish prisoner. Of course we have different tools to show how women suffer from the patriarch system. But we shouldn't forget that Mr. Erdem shows us a Kurdish woman in the resistance and he decides to present us a Kurdish man to be the penetrator of a Kurdish woman in a Turkish prison. Before this scene we see a Kurdish landlord who not only exploits the farm workers, but who also tries to rape Jȋn when he orders her one night to his house to pay her. However, she was able to escape.
Many times Mr. Erdem told the public that he wanted to tell a tale about the political conflict which caused and still causes so many deaths in both sides. That's why he chose the fresh green wood of the Kazdağlar and some animals who accompany Jȋn in her attempt to escape the conflict. It's the tale of the Little Red Riding Hood who wants to visit her grandmother. However, this tale  has no happy end: we see the young girl's body lying on a big stone in the wood behind her the animals. Her legs and arms falling down, her eyes open. We do not understand if she died or if she is still alive. Blood is running down her ankles, across the black lace of her leggings. This is the last image of Jȋn.
A North-Korean man asked Mr. Erdem in the same Q & A why he didn't let Jȋn kill the wounded Turkish soldier. Mr. Erdem responded, that his heart wouldn't allow him to show this. I wished he was equally merciful to the young Kurdish woman.