2m²

Tayfun, an undertaker for the Belgian-Turkish community, must help families decide where their loved ones should be buried. Through his wry humour and daily negotiations, 2m² reveals the mix of belonging, bureaucracy and small absurdities that shape life between two homelands.

How Much Land Does a Man Require? is the English title of an 1886 short story by Leo Tolstoy. In contemporary terms, the answer could be: 2m² – the size of a grave. That is the business in which Genk-based Tayfun Veli Arslan’o has found success: laying the dead to rest. Yet for him, one particular question accompanies nearly every burial. Where, exactly, should the final resting place be? Most of the people who require his services are immigrants or their descendants, and many families prefer to have their loved ones buried not in Belgian soil but back in the old country.

This choice comes with complications, sometimes grave, sometimes absurd, all of which Arslan’o has learned to navigate with a straight face and an astonishing amount of wry humour. His approach turns 2m² into something few would expect: a documentary about a funeral-parlour entrepreneur who is enthusiastic about his work, serious about its ethical weight, and unperturbed by the import-export complications of cross-border burials that becomes, in the end, a comedy of intercultural manners.

– Vanja Kaludjercic

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