She-J (2007)

One from Europe, the other from a country aspiring to be European for centuries; one from the West, the other from the East. Yet, both are women, DJs and mothers to 11-year old sons. SHE-J is the story of two alter-egos; DJ Beyza (Beyza) from Turkey and DJ Dame (Natasja) from Holland. It is not a film about DJs or the club scene but a film about women and Turkey with its young urban face and its confrontation with Europe. As the first female DJ of Turkey, Beyza says playing electronic music in Turkey is like trying to sell pork in a Muslim neighborhood. She travels from one city to another performing in different parts of Turkey and has hardly any time to see her son, Dunya. She must struggle to cope with a male-dominated society that sees her as a misfit. Her passion for her work as well as life conditions in Turkey force her to live a lonely life, unable to find a partner who would accept her marginal lifestyle. Natasja, on the other hand, seems to possess all that Beyza yearns for: a steady life partner who accepts her lifestyle and a more structured family life, as well as better professional economic resources. Yet everything is not necessarily as satisfying as it may seem from a distance. She feels stifled by the highly regulated, very ordered society in Holland. She yearns for more chaos in her life, because she feels that too much order kills individual creativity. But when the two women meet, they find out that the grass is not always greener on the other side.