Dying to Divorce
Synopsis
Working with a group of activists, Ipek is fighting to get justice for two survivors of horrific violence- Arzu, married off at 14 to a farmer ten years her senior and Kubra, a successful and glamorous TV presenter. From very different backgrounds, both were lucky to survive the attacks by their partners.
In the middle of these case, Turkey is rocked by an attempted coup that shakes Ipek’s world and puts her in jeopardy. Lawyers start to be threatened by an increasingly repressive government looking to crack down on all opposition. She must fight for democracy while continuing to fight for Kubra and Arzu.
Filmed over 5 years, DYING TO DIVORCE takes viewers into the heart of Turkey's gender-based violence crisis and the recent political events that have severely eroded democratic freedoms. Through intimately shot personal stories, the film gives a unique perspective on the struggle to be an independent woman in modern Turkey.
Official Selection Hot Docs Festival 2021 - Persister - North American premiere
Details
- Year
- 2020
- Type of project
- Features
- Running time
- 81 min
- Format
- Digital
- Director
-
Chloe Fairweather
- Producer
- Sinead Kirwan
- Executive Producer
- Natasha Dack Ojumu, Leslie Finlay, Christina Asquith
- Editor
- Paul Dosaj, Andrea Cuadrado
- Director of Photography
- Lilia Sellami, Chloe Fairweather
- Composer
- Andy Cowton
- Sound Designer
- Ali Murray
Categories
Production Status
Production Company
Dying to Divorce Ltd
23 Powerscroft RoadLondon E50PU
Page updates
This page was last updated on 12th May 2025. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.
See also
You may also be interested in other relevant projects in the database.
Spacewoman
Director: Hannah Berryman
Year: 2024
A landmark feature documentary about astronaut Eileen Collins, the first woman to pilot and command the Space Shuttle. Eileen’s incredible journey starts with her smalltown beginnings, sees her smash through many glass ceilings, and culminates in four dramatic space shuttle missions, the last being possibly the most dangerous and most important of them all. At its heart the film is the moving human drama of one family, where a mother’s extraordinary career takes us straight to the big philosophical question of what is the level of acceptable risk in human endeavour? This film celebrates Commander Collins’ trailblazing NASA career which opened the way for women to become spacecraft pilots and commanders, and proved a perfect riposte to a previous generation of male astronauts who thought there was no place for women to lead the way in space. Official Selection DOC NYC 2024 - World premiere Official Selection CPH:DOX 2025 - European premiere
Modupe
Director: Evan Ifekoya
Year: 2025
MODUPE is an experimental documentary that unfolds as a ceremony of queer belonging, inheritance, and sound. At its heart is a dialogue with Afro-Cuban priestess and musician Amelia Pedroso, whose legacy is invoked through archival traces, letters, and performance. Narrated as a letter to an ancestor, the film situates the search for connection within an interior, oceanic dreamscape where water, memory, and ritual become both setting and subject. Cinematically, MODUPE moves between a stylised ensemble rehearsal and a sacred library-archive. The ensemble of voice, drum, and dance provides the film’s pulse, collapsing rehearsal and ritual into one. Deep blue light, reflective surfaces, and submerged imagery create a sensorial architecture that is both intimate and expansive, with water presence throughout evoking both flood and transformation. Formally, the film resists linear storytelling, privileging atmosphere, rhythm, and sonic immersion. Objects, archives, and sacred materials hold the same cinematic weight as bodies in performance, reframing the archive as altar and sound as shrine. Narrative unfolds through resonance rather than resolution, drawing the viewer into a space of listening and reflection. MODUPE proposes cinema as a vessel for inheritance, where identity is fluid, memory is alive and liberation is lived through sound.
Dupe submission - All Rivers Spill Their Secrets To The Sea
Director: Jeanie Finlay
Year: 2026
Fisherman Stan Rennie and his family have always fished the waters of North East England for centuries. This line to history stretched uninterrupted, until a devastating tidemark of poisoned crabs appeared one Autumn morning like a biblical plague, heralding an unprecedented poisoning of the river and the sea Unless Stan - and others like him - can find answers, he may be the last of his kind. Can an unlikely alliance between a raggle-taggle group of salty fishers, elderly seal conservationist Sue and her equally elderly dog Mandy, with marine biologists be the key to survival? A richly layered story about the value of home and what happens when it is undermined by corruption, betrayal, and environmental collapse. Told with wit, pathos and underdog tenacity by the coastal community whose own Brexit votes may have been the catalyst for disaster.