Eat Sugar And Speak Sweetly

Filmmakers: Renate Bernhard & Sigrid Dethloff

Why should women who have been married against their own will continue to suffer in silence?

Fatma fled her marriage and now helps other women

Turkish author Fatma has been battling this question since she escaped her own forced marriage. Like many Turkish women, she was engaged to a distant relative. But unlike them, she ran away shortly before the wedding.

Since then, she has dedicated her life to helping other victims, publishing a book criticising forced marriages.

“Eat sugar and speak sweetly is a Kurdish and Turkish saying”, Fatma explains, “It means only talking about nice things – not mentioning what’s really happening.”

We hear Fatma’s own story and meet other women in Turkey and Germany who became engaged to men who they had never met, and who endured loveless and sometimes abusive relationships.

This compelling film uncovers the scale of forced marriages in Europe – and the extraordinary steps women are starting to take to defy these traditions.

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