 "The Herd, in fact, is the story of the Kurdish people, but I was not able to use the Kurdish language in the film. If Kurdish had been used, everyone who had collaborated on the film would have been thrown into prison" (1). With these words from his last interview, taped by journalist Chris Kutschera during the shooting in France of his last film, Duvar (1983), Yilmaz Guney evoked the situation of his people in the Turkey created by Ataturk. He went on to describe himself as an "assimilated Kurd". His mother was Kurdish and his father a Zaza Kurd, and they d spoken Kurdish and Zaza at home till he was 15. All this time he had been exposed to the dominant discourse of the nation: "There are no Kurds. There is no Kurdish language" whilst hearing Kurdish spoken and sung (2). He came to withdraw from his family background, feeling it harmed his awareness of who he was. At 16, however, he visited the region of his father s birth for the first time, and came to appreciate the sufferings of a deracinated family, and understand how he, as his parents said, was without roots. At 34, he at last visited his mother s region and tribe; the idea of the end of this nomadic tribe was the origin of The Herd.