This Is Not Me

„This is Not Me” tells the story of gay men who have had to marry women to hide their sexual orientation in the face of societal and family pressure in Turkey, and their own internal conflicts. The three main characters of the film, Mustafa, Mehmet and Yusuf migrated to Istanbul from small towns and come from conservative families. The film reveals each characters’ world: exhausted from continually playing at social roles and lying about their identity, faltering between their reality and their dreams, frustrated and stuck in their lives. It also looks at the subject from the aspect of women who are the other victims of these marriages. Mehmet and Yusuf, both married to women, act the part of heterosexual males and family men within their own social circles. Privately, however, they are passionately in love with their male lovers and can only live their truth within the parallel lives they have built with them. The driving character of the film, Mustafa, is Mehmet’s lover of 15 years. Mustafa describes Mehmet as a “homophobic homosexual.” During the first couple of years of their relationship Mehmet violently abused Mustafa because of guilt. In the film we see Mustafa trying to put this very passionate but equally traumatic relationship in the past. Mehmet, however, has no desire to let go of Mustafa.