Child grooms of Turkey tell their stories

Muhammet Beyazdağ, who won more than 10 awards last year for his documentary "Zarok" (Child), where child brides told their stories while only their hands were shown, has turned his camera to child grooms this time, whose heart-breaking stories are publicly told for the first time in his second film "Çirok" (Story).

The 25-year- old director is now doing his graduate studies at Akdeniz University in the Radio, Television and Cinema Department, after earlier graduating from the same department. His film "Zarok" was actually his third grade project. However, Beyazdağ said he never regarded the film as a class project. "I am from a family who migrated from Muş to Istanbul in the 1980s because of economic reasons. Among my relatives, there are many child brides. It was a sad and disturbing topic for me; I wanted do something about it," he said.

After a preparation period of about five months, six women agreed to tell their stories. To protect the women's identities, only their hands were shown. Despite this, Beyazdağ said, hands tell more than faces. 

This time men's hands 

While shooting the first documentary, the seeds of the second in the "hand trilogy," were planted. "While we were shooting ‘Zarok,' we noticed the existence of child grooms. Men are also married at an early age. It is wrong to distinguish as ‘male-female' in child marriages. The pains suffered by child grooms are not too different than the girls, but people hesitate for a moment and ask ‘Are there child grooms, too?' I wanted to depict child grooms after the film about child brides and raise awareness." 

Beyazdağ again reached the child grooms, both through association and through his own relatives. In five different cities, he talked to six child grooms,...