Red Zed & October Films Announce ‘My Name Is Happy’ Documentary

Press Release

Los Angeles, CA (May 2, 2023). Red Zed Films & BAFTA-winning independent production company October Films have announced that their documentary, My Name Is Happy. A joint production, helmed by Ayse Toprak and BAFTA-nominated filmmaker Nick Read. It is set for a short theatrical run following it’s sell-out UK premiere at the Soho Curzon cinema on May 19th, 2023.

The film is executive produced by October Films’ Adam Bullmore (End of the Storm, Viagra the Little Blue Pill, and This is Football) & Siobhan Sinnerton (For Sama, Lyra, and In her Hands).

The film will screen at the following cinemas, with more to be announced:

Cinema: Rio Dalston
Date: May 21^st, 2023
Time: 3.45 pm
Address: 107 Kingsland High St, London, E8 2PB
Cinema: Arthouse, Crouch End

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Date: June 7^th, 2023 Time: 6:00 pm
Address: 159A Tottenham Ln, London, N8 9BT
Cinema: Hackney Picturehouse
Date: June 8^th, 2023
Time: 8.00 pm

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Address: 270 Mare St, London, E8 1HE
Cinema: Home
Date: June 20^th, 2023
Time: TBC
Address: 2 Tony Wilson Place, First Street, Manchester, M15 4FN

The film had its world premiere at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in November 2022. Its US premiere at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in February 2023. The film won the Human Rights/Human Wrongs Award at the Human Documentary Film Festival in Oslo in March 2023. Before winning the Storyboard Collective Impact Award, and the PGI Youth Jury Award at the 21st FIFDH Film Festival in Geneva. The film will also screen at the 63rd Krakow Film Festival and other festivals through to end of 2023.

The Official Trailer for My Name is Happy

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As a teenager, Mutlu Kaya, a Kurdish woman from south-eastern Turkey, was a promising singer. In 2015 her dreams were about to come true when she reached the finals of Turkey’s Got Talent. Some days before the final she was gunned down by a man whose marriage proposal she had refused.

Remarkably she survived – with a bullet in her brain. After years of rehabilitation from life threatening injuries, violence strikes the family is again. This time, Mutlu’s carer, her sister Dilek, did not survive a murder attempt by another jilted suitor.

We follow Mutlu and her close-knit musical family through their turbulent ordeals, their struggle to recover, and their fight for justice and the rights of women to live free from male violence in Turkey and beyond. Intimate shots of the Kaya family are complemented by archive footage of excerpts from the talent show and news items on this urgent topic.

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More determined than ever, Mutlu rallies her two million online followers with a protest song addressing the issue of femicide. The film’s UK premiere on May 19th, 2023, at Soho Curzon is host to Channel 4 and Turkey Mozaik Foundation, a London based NGO providing financial support to innovative civil society organisations in Turkey.

Nick Read 
An Emmy Award & BAFTA nominated filmmaker known for making acclaimed observational documentaries. He has shot & directed over 50 films, many of them in remote or high-risk locations (Inside Israel’s Jails, Slumdog Children of Mumbai, The Condemned etc). His work has won two Foreign Press Association awards, The Rory Peck Impact Award, and the Creative Diversity Award for best documentary.

Ayse Toprak 
Recently relocated from Istanbul to London. A graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, she has an MA in Media Studies at the New School. From 2011, she worked extensively for Al Jazeera in Turkey, London, and Doha, producing social and political documentaries in the Middle East. In 2016 Ayse began work on her first feature documentary, Mr Gay Syria.

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