Mardin, 1915: one night, the Turkish police rounds up all the Armenian men in the city, including the young blacksmith, Nazaret Manoogian, who is separated from his family. Years later, after managing to survive the horrors of the genocide, he hears that his two daughters are also still alive. He becomes fixated on the idea of finding them and sets off to track them down. His search takes him from the Mesopotamian deserts and Havana to the barren and desolate prairies of North Dakota. On this odyssey, he encounters a range of very different people: angelic and kind-hearted characters, but also the devil incarnate.

A film by Fatih Akin

Germany | 2014 | Fiction, 138min

starring Tahar Rahim, Sévan Stephan, Shubham Saraf, Ali Akdeniz, Dina Fakhoury, Zein Fakhoury, Hindi Zahra
Format: DCP, 35 mm / color
Original languages: English, Arabic, Turkish, Kurdish, Spanish

Set in 1915 during World War I, the political winds turn and minorities of the Ottoman Empire suddenly acquire enemy status. One night Turkish gendarmes arrests Armenian blacksmith Nazaret Manoogian (Tahar Rahim) who lives in Mardin in southeastern Turkey with his wife Rakel (Hindi Zahra) and their twin daughters Arsinée and Lucinée (Zein and Dina Fakhoury).
Nazaret's brother Hrant (Akin Gazi) and their brother-in-law Vahan (George Georgiou) were arrested as well leaving behind Nazaret's wife Rakel and the twin girls.

The men are forced to be road builders, whoever refuses is killed. And however converts to the Islamic religion is pardoned, the offer that not many accepted. Abruptly the gendarmes vanish, but sadly before Nazaret and the others manage to flee, they are detained again by a squad of mercenaries and ex-convicts. Chained to one another and led to a valley to be executed by sword and knife to save bullets. Nazaret suffers a life-threatening cut to the neck, but survives.
Nazaret is rescued by former thief Mehmet (Bartu Küçükçağlayan) while the neck cut of Nazaret taken away his voice. Both in the callous desert, they find a group of deserters informing them that all the women and children have fled from Mardin.
Nazaret heads towards Ras Al-Ayn searching for the refugee camp in the middle of the desert to find thousands of suffering refugees, he finally finds his sister-in-law Ani (Arévik Martirossian), telling him everyone in the family is dead and that she'll soon die, too. Desperately, he jumps on one of the passing Badhdad Railway trains.
Omar Nasreddin (Makram J. Khoury), a soap maker from Aleppo finds Nazaret exhausted and hungry, he sneaks him into town under the gaze of Turkish guards. For the time being, he can be secure behind the heavy gates of the soap factory, where he befriends another Armenian refugee, Krikor (Simon Abkarian).
One night Nazaret attends an outdoor screening of Charlie Chaplin's silent movie The Kid, after the Armenians were able to move freely again in 1921, he remembers his twin daughters and moved to tears. On his way he meets his former apprentice Levon (Shubham Saraf) telling him that before Rakel's death, she entrusted the twins to a Bedouin family. He regains his will to live and search for his daughters. Nazaret makes a list of the almost 100 orphanages in French-Syria and Lebanon where they might be.
In 1922 in Lebanon, head of the Byblos orphanage (Trine Dyrholm) shows him a photograph in which he recognizes his twin daughters, who left the institution a year ago. His search takes him across the ocean to Havana, and eventually to the USA, from Florida to Minneapolis to the barren and desolate prairies of North Dakota.

Director's Statement
The Cut is an epic film, a drama, an adventure movie and a western all rolled into one. The film may be set a hundred years ago, but it could not be more topical: it tells a tale of war and displacement, as well as portraying the power of love and hope, which enables us to achieve the unimaginable. The Cut is the conclusion of the Love, Death and the Devil trilogy. It explores the theme of "the devil," examining evil and the harm we are capable of inflicting on others-both unwittingly and deliberately-showing the fine line that often separates good from evil. The Cut has become a very personal film. Thematically, it explores my conscience and formally it expresses my passion for the medium of film.

Director: Fatih Akin
Screenplay: Fatih Akin - Mardik Martin
Director of Photography: Rainer Klausmann
Editing: Andrew Bird
Sound Design: Jean-Paul Mugel
Music: Alexander Hacke
Costume Design: Katrin Aschendorf

Producers: Fatih Akin, Karl Baumgartner, Reinhard Brundig
Co-Producers: Fabienne Vonier, Francis Boespflug, Alberto
Fanni, Valerio de Paolis, Ruben Dishdishyan, Aram Movsesy, Laurette Bourassa, Doug Steeden, Piotr Dzieciol, Ewa Puszczynska
Executive producers: Flaminio Zadra, Nurhan Sekerci

Cast:
Tahar Rahim, Sévan Stephan, Shubham Saraf, Ali Akdeniz, Dina Fakhoury, Zein Fakhoury, Hindi Zahra

Production: Bombero International
World sales: The Match Factory

THE CUT was shot in 2013 in Cuba, Canada, Jordan and Germany and is the first bombero international film release.


2014 | 36th Cairo International Film Festival - CIFF 2014, Egypt
* Film d'Ouverture / Opening Film
www.ciff.org.eg

2014 | 71ème Festival de Venise / 71st Venice International Film Festival, Italie
* Sélection Officielle / Official Selection
* Première Mondiale / World Premiere
* Projection/Screening: 31 August 16:30 - Sala Grande
* Projection/Screening: 31 August 20:00 - PalaBiennale
www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/71st-festival/line-up/off-sel/venezia71/the-cut.html