Elbow

Q&A with Director Aslı Özarslan and Author Fatma Aydemir following the screening

Hazal’s greatest wish is to have a life. Despite many applications, she isn’t invited to a single job interview. Instead, she is stuck in a Job Centre training program that fails to open up any new opportunities for her. But on her 18th birthday, Hazal feels powerful. It is like the old days when she and her friends believed they could achieve anything as long as they stuck together. It’s only when they’re lining up to get into a hip club that Hazal feels they don’t belong there. And she’s right. The bouncer refuses to let them in.
On their way home, they’re verbally abused by an arrogant student. The situation escalates, Hazal’s frustration about all the rejections erupts into a fatal act. Hazal flees headlong to Istanbul, a strange city in a country unknown to her. There, she has to survive on her own, no matter what the cost.
Elbow tells the story of a young woman who is pushed out of society and has to reset the course of her life. We want to run through the night with her; we want to know what happens next – for her, and for us all.
Directed by Aslı Özarslan based on the novel Ellbogen by Fatma Aydemir
Germany 2024
86 Minutes, DCP


Aslı Özarslan born 1986 in Berlin. She studied from Theater and Media at the University of Bayreuth and philosophy and sociology at the Université Sorbonne IV in Paris. This was followed by editorial work for 3sat Kulturzeit, ZDF, ARD foreign studio in Warsaw. From 2012-2017 she studied documentary film directing at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. INSEL 36 (2014) and her diploma film DIL LEYLA (2016) won international and national awards. Her current debut feature film project ELBOW (2024) has its world premiere at the 74th Berlinale in the Generation section.