Vase

Duru is a five-year-old girl with a vivid imagination. Instead of accepting the world around her as it is, she tries to make sense of it by transforming it into her own playground. The simple games she plays in her room—mixing dirt with water, burying her toys in the mud—are a creative process for her, a childlike effort to heal a broken world. When her mother enters the room, the mess and mud she sees initially appear to be a child’s mischief. Yet this reaction carries not only a sense of helplessness directed at Duru but also at the nature of the world they inhabit—a world that is increasingly drying up, becoming polluted, and turning into an unlivable place. The mother speaks not out of personal anger but under the weight of collective exhaustion. Suddenly, the setting shifts; the interior of the house gives way to arid, cracked earth. This transition highlights the point where Duru’s imagination and reality intertwine. The game is no longer just a game; it is the form that environmental destruction takes in a child’s mind. The mother’s outstretched hand, meanwhile, represents the hope and the possibility of connection that still exist amidst this destruction. The film addresses environmental devastation and the helplessness of adults through a child’s perspective, using a poetic language. Duru’s imagination creates a naive yet powerful space of resistance against extinction.