As viewed through the perceptive lens of writer-director Yesim Ustaoglu, a young man's abrupt political awakening resonates to powerful effect in Journey To The Sun, an illuminating look at the systemic persecution of Kurdish immigrants in Turkey. Recently transplanted to Istanbul from a small provincial town in the West, Newroz Baz works for the water department, prowling the streets with a long brass rod used to hear leaks in the pipes below. His occupation serves as an effective metaphor for Ustaoglu's documentary style, which shows a modern city teeming with vitality and culture while keeping an ear to the ominous rumbles underground. Almost in passing, she notes the ubiquity of armed guards on street corners and stairwells, as if to imply that Baz, like other Turkish citizens, takes their presence for granted. It's only later, after he's struck by an unfortunate twist of fate, that the city suddenly transforms into a police state before his eyes. These political realities are all too familiar to his new friend Nazmi Qirix, an ebullient Kurdish street vendor who sells bootleg cassettes out of a pushcart. Baz's connection to Qirix, a suspected terrorist, gets him in trouble when he's wrongly arrested for gun possession during a routine ID check. Mistaken for a Kurd due to his unusually dark skin, he's severely beaten in prison and returns a pariah, abruptly tossed out of his apartment, fired from his job, and separated from his girlfriend (Mizgin Kapazan) by her protective parents. When another sad turn of events forces Baz to travel to Qirix's homeland near the Iraqi border, Journey To The Sun deepens into a startling exposé of the devastation visited upon Kurdish villages in southeastern Turkey. Once outside the city, Ustaoglu moves from jagged realism to picturesque landscapes that recall Greek master Theo Angelopoulos in their austere beauty. The only signs that connect city and country are the bright red "X" marks tagged on homes by Turkish authorities, a portentous cue to things to come. Married to the perspective of a naïve outsider, Ustaoglu's discoveries are made accessible on a universal scale, an urgent reminder of one-world ethnic oppression.