Those nine women doing theater in their own village would, in any case, write and put on stage a play based on their life stories, whether or not I made this movie. That was the most exciting aspect of this work for me.

I wanted to shoot a fiction-like documentary rather than a documentary-like fiction film, without trying to be invisible but quietly integrating myself in their lives at that very village, at that very moment and with the very people living through this happening.

It has been a very important experience for me to observe the film to go back and forth on the thin line between a documentary and a fiction film while I was shooting, whilst the line between their real lives and their play blurred.

Our filming crew of three eventually turned out to be a part of their theater team. Working under similar circumstances they created, at the end of five weeks, "the play of their lives", and I created, at the end of two years, the film "The Play".

Pelin Esmer