The Little Sparrow From the Bosporus

Selma sings to survive. Her favourite songs are those of the Turkish star Sezen Aksu, known as the Little Sparrow From the Bosporus, because they remind her of home. Selma was born in 1971, to Gudrun (an East Berlin native) and Mehmet, back then a Turkish Gastarbeiter who lived with his «real» family in Kreuzberg and could only visit the GDR on weekends. When her beloved Baba returns to Turkey in the early 1980s, Selma is left behind on the other side of the Wall. The events of 1989 allow her to begin a search for him and her own roots.

Tuğsal Moğul and Christiane Hagedorn’s song recital not only follows the stages of Selma’s unusual biography but also explores recent German-Turkish history, giving the term «parallel society» a whole new meaning.