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Accepting the best actress award at one of Türkiye's oldest film festivals, Hazar Erguclu used her speech to remember a 13-year-old boy who stood at his father's coffin at a miners' funeral this week, saying she felt "ashamed" to be alive while he grieved.
Erguclu won the award at the 33rd International Adana Golden Boll Film Festival for her role as Gul in "Mutter: Bir Annenin Hatira Defteri." The closing ceremony was held at Cukurova University's congress center in Adana, in southern Türkiye.
Struggling to speak, the actress addressed 13-year-old Yasar Oren, whose father, Kerim Oren, 37, was one of five workers killed in a collapse at a mine in the town of Soma, in western Turkey's Manisa province.
Kerim Oren, who had two children, was buried Friday in his hometown of Kirkagac.
"When I see the children of miners crying, I am ashamed of living, of the breath I take," Erguclu said. "Injustices are too much for me, and whatever I do, I can't get rid of this sorrow."
She said her own grandparents were coal workers and that she spent part of her childhood around coal mines.
"Every time a miner dies, I see my own grandfather and grandmother," she said, recalling their labor to live decently and send their children to school.
"Isn't Yasar's suffering partly our responsibility?" she asked, apologizing to the boy "because I can't do anything but remember him here." She added that hope was all that remained, and "we are not going to give it up."
Erguclu also used her acceptance speech to criticize conditions in the film industry. Celebrating, she said, has long been hard for people in the sector, and she lamented efforts to make everyone "uniform" and push them into "the same mold."
She said she was honored to be recognized and to see a film of this kind included in the festival's lineup.
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