The Wild Pear Tree for the Academy Awards

Turkey nominates Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s The Wild Pear Tree for the Academy Awards. Fifth time lucky I hope.

Mavi Boncuk |

The Wild Pear Tree
Ahlat Agaci
Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Turkey, France, Germany, Bulgaria, 2018, STC

An aspiring young author returns home from college to pursue his passion for literature, but is faced with a complicated family dynamic caused by his father’s gambling addiction, in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s (Winter Sleep) hypnotic and affecting tale of discovery.  

Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Produced by Zeynep Özbatur Atakan

Written by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Ebru Ceylan, Akın Aksu

Cast: Aydın Doğu Demirkol as Sinan,  Murat Cemcir, Bennu Yıldırımlar, Hazar Ergüçlü, Akın Aksu, Ahmet Rıfat Şungar, Serkan Keskin, Tamer Levent,  Kadir Çermikli,  Ercüment Balakoğlu,  Kubilay Tunçer,  Öner Erkan

Cinematography Gökhan Tiryaki

Edited by Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Distributed by Memento Films Production

Release date: May 2018 (Cannes)

Running time: 188 minute

Country Turkey, France, Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Bosnia, Sweden

Language Turkish

Le poirier sauvage (Ahlat agaci|Wild Pear) by Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, who won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2014 with Winter Sleep and has won several other awards at Cannes (the Grand Prix in 2003 and 2011 with Uzak and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia respectively, and the award for Best Director in 2008 with Three Monkeys . 

His (3:08:00)film centres around Sinan, who is passionate about literature and has always wanted to be a writer. Returning to the village where he was born, he pours his heart and soul into scraping together the money he needs to be published, but his father’s debts catch up with him… Commenting on the plot, Nuri Bilge Ceylan says: 

"Whether we like it or not, we can’t help but inherit certain defining features from our fathers, like a certain number of their weaknesses, their habits, their mannerisms and much, much more. The story of a son’s unavoidable slide towards a fate resembling that of his father is told here through a series of painful experiences." Le poirier sauvage will be produced by Parisian company (and Winter Sleep partner) Memento Films Production and Turkish company Zeyno Film.  

 “Whether we like it or not, we can’t help but inherit certain defining features from our fathers, like a certain number of their weaknesses, their habits, their mannerisms and much, much more. The story of a son’s unavoidable slide towards a fate resembling that of his father is told here through a series of painful experiences,” Ceylan says. 

 Nuri Bilge Ceylan's screenplay for The Wild Pear Tree, as usual, contains quotes from various sources including Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ibn Arabi, Shams-i Tabrizi, Peyami Safa, Yunus Emre and Muhammed.