Best of Turkish Cinema
According to Mavi Boncuk
IF MY WIFE CHEATS ME | 1933 MUHSIN ERTUĞRUL
AYSEL BATAKLI DAMIN KIZI | 1935 MUHSIN ERTUĞRUL
THE VICTIM OF LUST | 1940 MUHSIN ERTUĞRUL
BEYOND THE NIGHTS 1960 | METIN ERKSAN
SEVISTIGIMIZ GÜNLER | 1961 HALIT REFIG
BITTER LIFE | 1962 METIN ERKSAN
THE THREE-WHEELED BICYCLE / TRICYCLE | 1962 LÜTFI Ö. AKAD
STRANGER IN THE CITY | 1962 HALIT REFIĞ
DRY SUMMER (1963) METIN ERKSAN
Winner of the prestigious Golden Bear at the 1964 Berlin International Film Festival, Metin Erksan’s wallop of a melodrama follows the machinations of an unrepentantly selfish tobacco farmer who builds a dam to prevent water from flowing downhill to his neighbors’ crops.
Alongside this tale of soul-devouring competition is one of overheated desire, as a love triangle develops between the farmer, his more decent brother, and the beautiful villager the latter takes as his bride.
A benchmark of Turkish cinema, this is a visceral, innovatively shot and vibrantly acted depiction of the horrors of greed.
Restored in 2008 by the Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in association with The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, Ulvi Dogan, and Fatih Akim. Additional elements provided by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Stiftung. Restoration funded by Armani, Cariter, Qatar Airways, and Qatar Museum Authority.
ERKEK ALI | 1964 ATIF
YILMAZ
The story of a young man who rebels against the landowner (Agha) class in the east side of Turkey. The story ends with the death of the young man, who remains in the little girl he left an orphan and the young widow who is passionately in love with him.
Ali is a young man smuggling at the border. Haydar Ağa wants Ali to work for him, but Ali does not accept it. Thereupon, Haydar had his housekeeper Osman and his men beat Ali. Hatice, who finds Ali injured in a deserted place, takes him home and ensures that he is healed. After regaining his health, Ali kills Osman to take revenge. Thereupon, Osman's orphaned granddaughter Zeynep moves in with her relatives. Ali suffers from the guilt of Zeynep's experiences and tries to help her when she is freed from her sentence.
GURBET KUSLARI | 1964 HALIT REFIĞ
BEYOND THE WALLS | 1964 ORHAN ELMAS
LAST BIRDS | 1965 ERDOĞAN TOKATLI
Time to Love (Turkish: Sevmek Zamanı) is a drama film, produced, co-written and directed by Metin Erksan, featuring Müşfik Kenter as a poor house painter who falls in love with a photograph of a woman while at work in one of the massive villas on Istanbul's Princes' Islands.
What happens when she appears in the flesh? Sevmek Zamani is a remarkable example of the Turkish new wave that has rarely been screened or written about outside Turkey.
"- Isn't your picture you? Your painting is something of my world. I know your picture, not you. Maybe you will destroy all my beautiful thoughts.
– Your behavior comes from a fear.
- Yes. It comes from a fear. This fear is the fear of having something I love forever. What would happen if I fell in love with you and not your painting? Maybe you wouldn't even look at me once. Maybe you would make fun of my love. However, your picture looks friendly to me. He looks with kindness and will look forever..."
ENDLESS ROAD | 1965 DUYGU SAĞIROĞLU
OH BEAUTIFUL ISTANBUL | 1966 ATIF YILMAZ
LOVE STORIES OF THE PALE NIGHT | 1966 ALP ZEKI HEPER
VESIKALI YARIM | 1968 LÜTFI AKAD
This melodrama, adapted to the cinema from the story Menekşeli Vadi by Sait Faik Abasıyanık, one of the most important names in Turkish literature. Türkan Şoray, İzzet Günay and Ayfer Feray shared the lead roles in the film, which was shot by Lütfi Ömer Akad from the script of Safa Önal.
Halil is a married greengrocer with children, Halil, who goes from home to work, from work to home, goes to the pavilion with his friends one day to make a change in his monotonous life. In the pavilion, he meets Sabiha, one of the women working there. Halil falls in love with Sabiha and Sabiha falls in love with Halil. Despite the warnings of her friend Müjgan that they are not suitable for each other, Sabiha takes Halil to her house and they start living together.
However, there are facts that Sabiha does not know about Halil's life.But Halil hides from Sabiha that he is married. While Sabiha is making future plans for Halil, she is upset when she learns the truth. Since Halil cannot risk his home being destroyed, he has no choice but to alienate him from himself.
HOPE | 1970 YILMAZ GUNEY
DÖNÜŞ | 1972 TÜRKÂN ŞORAY
BRIDE | 1973 LÜTFI AKAD
CANIM KARDEŞIM | 1973 ERTEM EĞILMEZ
ARKADAŞ | 1974 YILMAZ GÜNEY
ZAVALLILAR | 1974 ATIF YILMAZ
MY GIRL WITH THE RED SCARF | 1977 ATIF YILMAZ
NEŞELI GÜNLER | 1978 ORHAN AKSOY
THE HERD | 1978 ZEKI ÖKTEN
THE ROAD | 1982 ŞERIF GÖREN, YILMAZ GUNEY
ÇIÇEK ABBAS | 1982 SINAN ÇETIN
THE WRESTLER | 1984 ZEKI ÖKTEN
AAAHH BELINDA | 1986 ATIF YILMAZ
MOTHERLAND HOTEL | 1987 ÖMER KAVUR
“Motherland Hotel” is the only novel by Turkish author Yusuf Atılgan yet translated into English. At barely 150 pages it is a minor masterpiece: The dark story of one man’s descent into madness, convulsed by sexual obsession and social isolation. Atılgan has been compared to Camus and Faulkner, but above all “Motherland Hotel” evokes a kind of Turkish version of The Shining.
As the lonely proprietor of a small hotel in a provincial Turkish town, Zebercet manages to keep it up with the help of one maid, a little girl who lives with him. One evening, one of the clients leaves the hotel, promising to return in a week. Haunted by the memory of the beautiful unknown, it leaves little to be gained by a little melancholy. Overwhelmed by his impulses, he refuses to take any clients, and closes the hotel.
" His tedious life is dramatically interrupted by the one-night stay of an alluring woman visiting from the capital, referred to only as “the woman off the Ankara train.” When she leaves in the morning she tells him that she is visiting relatives in the country and will return in one week for another night. Although the woman’s stay is brief and their conversation is minimal, Zebercet quickly becomes obsessed.
He shaves off his mustache and purchases new clothing so he will look his best when she returns. He preserves the room she stayed in shrine-like, periodically creeping into it to masturbate (and more) beside her perceived ghost. He sleeps in the bed, leaves the sheets unchanged, and fondles the sweater and towel she left behind. The novel presents his gradual psychological unraveling with barely a wasted word. Quotidian details are precisely observed and loaded with meaning. A claustrophobic atmosphere is built with unspoken tension and few fireworks.
A week passes without the woman’s return, followed by more weeks and months. Zebercet descends further into obsessive madness and debasement. The woman’s visit triggers traumatic senses just below the surface. We get tantalizing glimpses of a history of familial bad luck, violence and sexual trauma, as the narrative fragments in line with Zebercet’s mental state. The threads that have drawn the novel together are poetically unraveled, as it alternates between traditional narrative fiction and modernist stream-of-consciousness poetry. Zebercet’s psychic rambling becomes increasingly spectacular, but on the surface “Motherland Hotel” remains introverted and domestic. "
"Ömer Kavur recreates Zebercet, the receptionist of a sad, bleak hotel in a small Anatolian town, adapting him from Yusuf Atilgan's novel in an attempt that seemed risky to others. A film about loneliness, solitude, obsession and depression, evidently one of the most painful films in Turkish cinema."
MR MUHSIN | 1987 YAVUZ TURGUL
ARABESK | 1988 ERTEM EĞILMEZ
DON'T LET THEM SHOOT THE KITE | 1989 TUNÇ BAŞARAN
SECRET FACE | 1991 ÖMER KAVUR
The Secret Face is a strange and beautiful film that approaches the unconscious mind through the process of Middle Eastern mysticism. The movie's central character is a young Turkish man who decides to leave his home and move to Istanbul. While in Istanbul he forms a friendship and then falls in love with a mysterious woman who suddenly disappears. He embarks on frantic search for the woman and in the process is lead on a metaphorical journey that leads into his own unconscious mind.
About a young photographer and a confused young woman and a watchmaker. woman looks for a missing face, photographer helps her, takes photos for her. then he finds a face ;watchmaker. after 2 days both of them get lost and young man searchs them city by city at Anatolia. An epic story about love, family, mystic faces-places. Nobel winner Orhan Pamuk wrote the script based on a story mentioned in the "Love Stories of the Snowy Night" in the Black Book, and turned it into a book in 1992.
The leading roles were shared by Zuhal Olcay, Fikret Kuşkan, Sevda Ferdağ, Savaş Yurttaş and Rutkay Aziz. The film received the best film and best screenplay awards at the Antalya Film Festival in 1991, and the best film award at the Montreal New Cinema Festival in the same year.
"Journey is one of three or four themes that I like to cover. I like to use real journeys in my film. Because I also like travels. But it is also possible to talk about an inner journey. A person's or an individual's own inner journey, which is even more meaningful to me." Ömer Kavur
WHISTLE IF YOU COME BACK | 1992 ORHAN OĞUZ
SOMERSAULT IN A COFFIN | 1996 DERVIŞ ZAIM
THE BANDIT | 1996 YAVUZ TURGUL
INNOCENCE | 1997 ZEKI DEMIRKUBUZ
Yusuf is released from prison after serving a ten year sentence. He is scared of life outside as he goes to an address given to him by another prisoner.
"Masumiyet slices from past to present in Turkish cinema; it severs the audience from its expectations; it carves through the lives and loves of its characters, and bleeds. The film is a carefully rendered tale of unrequited love and a haunting past that reveals the mute nature of the ambiguous present. The past dwells in the present, and the present seeks its past not only through the characters’ lives but also through the director’s appropriation of Turkish classical melodrama and self-reflexive filmmaking. Innocence is Zeki Demirkubuz’s second feature, and the genesis of his most recent film, Kader (Destiny, 2006), a prequel that transforms the viewing of its original almost a decade later. Innocence is a turning point not only for its exceptional actors and the skillful storytelling that evokes mid-1990s melodrama, but also in the way that it attempts to rethink and misplace the tradition of melodrama and spectatorship in and outside the film’s world. Instead of settling its characters and audience in a predestined life that epitomizes the structure of classical melodrama, Innocence leaves them incomplete and unsettled.
The film starts with Yusuf (Guven Kirac) in prison, on the day of his release. The warden reads his letter that says Yusuf has “no place to go.” Reading of the letter and discussing the rationality of this request are interrupted by a door that opens and closes repeatedly. This motif of doors that will not close is a device the filmmaker uses in succeeding films with varying functions. Here, it reveals framed and multiple realities; it serves as the crack in the boundary between exteriors and interiors—between the unsettling rules of the external world and the characters that have long since lost their ease. As Yusuf steps into his new life in a hotel where he will meet Bekir (Haluk Bilginer) and Ugur (Derya Alabora), we are introduced to a world of other people like him who have “no place to go,” who sit in the lobbies of cheap hotels and watch old Turkish melodramas on TV. The lobbies are like courtyards of non-places, of no belonging. The old films in the background set a fictional past for these people who live in a timeless and circular present. For twenty years, Bekir follows Ugur wherever she goes, while Ugur follows her often-jailed lover wherever he goes, in a never ending circle that is destined to continue as Yusuf slowly finds his place in this order.
The significance of Innocence resides in its believability. Having captured a limited national and international audience, yet highly acclaimed by the critics, the film resists time and becomes a locus that is enriched with Destiny. We keep revisiting this locus: the locus of love, belonging, suffering, and an impossible desire that tears apart the preconceived, predestined pattern of life. Through the cracks of reality, Innocence beckons a quest for truth where truth can only be found in love." SOURCE
THE SMALL TOWN | 1997 NURI BILGE CEYLAN
A WIDOWED WOMAN | 1985 ATIF YILMAZ
ZÜĞÜRT AĞA | 1985 NESLI ÇÖLGEÇEN
IPEKÇE | 1987 BILGE OLGAÇ
ON BOAT | 1998 SERDAR AKAR
A SAINT IN LALELI | 1988 KUDRET SABANCI
MY CINEMAS | 1990 FÜRUZAN, GÜLSÜN KARAMUSTAFA
A HEART OF GLASS | 1990 FEHMI YAŞAR
THE UNFORGETTABLE DIRECTOR OF LOVE MOVIES | 1990 YAVUZ TURGUL
KELEBEKLER SONSUZA UÇAR | 1993 MESUT UÇAKAN
INNOCENCE | 1997 ZEKI DEMIRKUBUZ
CHOLERA STREET | 1997 MUSTAFA ALTIOKLAR
HAMMAM | 1997 FERZAN ÖZPETEK
HER ŞEY ÇOK GÜZEL OLACAK | 1998 ÖMER VARGI
PROPAGANDA | 1999 SINAN ÇETIN
THE THIRD PAGE | 1999 ZEKI DEMIRKUBUZ
Isa, a walk-on in movie productions, is blamed for a fifty-dollar robbery in a mafia-rooted environment. As a result, he is badly beaten and given twenty-four hours to return the money. Instead of finding the money, Isa finds a gun. He decides to commit suicide. Just when he is about to pull the trigger, the doorbell rings...
" How far can we understand a person by looking at his/her role in the social structure? Would trying to grasp reality through sociological analyses, images, adjectives, class categorizations, media and “experts on life” take us far? And what role would our character, which we try so hard to understand by naming everything that we have lived, as well as everything which left a mark on our souls as good, evil, weak and strong, play in that reality?
I, of course, wrote this story from the starting point of my own knowledge and feelings. And I tried to shoot it by adding meaning to these. But if I consider the questions I have just asked, I must confess that the effort that took a couple of years of my life is just a stunted copy of what I don’t know, and an attempt to smell the cesspool that we call life." Zeki Demirkubuz
Awards
2000 International Istanbul Film Festival (Turkey): Best Director, Best Actress (Basak Koklukaya), FIPRESCI Award: Best Film in National Competition
2000 International Film Festival of Tbilisi (Georgia): Best Script
2000 Orhan Murat Ariburnu Awards: Best Director, Best Film, Best Actor (Ruhi Sari), Best Actress (Basak Koklukaya)
1999 Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival (Turkey): Best 3rd Film, Best Script, Best Cinematography, Best Actress (Basak Koklukaya)
1999 Film Critics Association (SIYAD) Awards (Turkey): Best Script, Best Actor (Ruhi Sari)
1999 Contemporary Screen Actors Association (CASOD) Acting Awards (Turkey): Best Actor (Ruhi Sari)
1999 Sadri Alisik Awards (Turkey): Best Actor (Ruhi Su), Best Actress (Basak Koklukaya)
RUN MONEY RUN | 1999 REHA ERDEM
LOLA+BİLİDİKİD | 1999 KUTLUĞ ATAMAN
21ST CENTURY |
DISTANT | 2002 NURI BILGE CEYLAN
INNOWHERELAND | 2002 TAYFUN PIRSELIMOGLU
WAITING FOR THE CLOUDS | 2003 YEŞIM USTAOĞLU
HEAD ON | 2004 FATIH AKIN
ANLAT İSTANBUL | 2004 ÜMIT ÜNAL & ÖMÜR ATAY
BOATS OUT OF WATERMELON RINDS | 2004 AHMET ULUÇAY
BABAM VE OĞLUM | 2005 ÇAĞAN IRMAK
DONDURMAM GAYMAK | 2005 YÜKSEL AKSU
HACIVAT KARAGÖZ NEDEN ÖLDÜRÜLDÜ? | 2005 EZEL AKAY
GÖNÜL YARASI | 2005 YAVUZ TURGUL
DESTINY/KADER | 2006 ZEKI DEMIRKUBUZ
Kader (Destiny) tells the story of the younger years of two characters we met in Masumiyet (Innocence, 1997), the director’s second film. Bekir falls in love with Ugur. Ugur is in love with Zagor, who can’t seem to stay away from trouble. Zagor is arrested after getting involved in the murder of two police officers. Initially, this event gives some hope to Bekir, but it turns out to be the beginning of an incurable illness in the pursuit of merciless love that would last for years. As Bekir follows Ugur like a stubborn dog in run-down hotels, marijuana parties and seedy nightclubs, love grows with pain, poverty, tears and evil.
" I have always wanted to express the hatred I feel towards the privileged and those who only want to have priviliges, as well as the feelings of guilt that I have carried all my life." Zeki Demirkubuz
Awards
2007 International Istanbul Film Festival (Turkey): Best Director, Best Actor (Ufuk Bayraktar), FIPRESCI Award
2007 Ankara International Film Festival (Turkey): Best Director, Best Actress (Vildan Atasever), Best Supporting Actress (Muge Ulusoy)
2007 Nürnberg Film Festival (Germany): Best Film
2006 International Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival (Turkey): Best Film, Best Upcoming Actor (Ufuk Bayraktar)
TIMES AND WINDS | 2006 REHA ERDEM
In a small village in the mountains overlooking the sea the people struggle to survive on a daily basis. Their lives, like those of their ancestors, follow the rhythms of the earth, air and water, of day and night and the seasons, with days divided into five parts by the call to prayer. Childhood is difficult and a father typically has a preference of one son over the other. Ömer, the son of the Imam, is such a victim of his father's dislike and he wishes for the death of his father. When his wish is not granted he begins to look for ways to kill him as a twelve-year-old boy might think of with his friend Yakup. Yakup seeing his father sexually interested in his teacher also develops a hatred of his father in the same way and as the children grow up they are riddled between guilt and love and hate for their fathers.
HOKKABAZ | 2006 CEM YILMAZ
TAKVA | 2006 ÖZER KIZILTAN
THE LITTLE APOCALYPSE| 2006 YAĞMUR TAYLAN, DURUL TAYLAN
RECEP İVEDIK | 2007 TOGAN GÖKBAKAR
THE EDGE OF HEAVEN | 2007 FATIH AKIN
EGG | 2007 SEMIH KAPLANOĞLU
RIZA | 2007 TAYFUN PIRSELIMOGLU
MILK | 2008 SEMIH KAPLANOĞLU
SUMMER BOOK | 2008 SEYFI TEOMAN
İKI DIL BIR BAVUL | 2008 ORHAN ESKIKÖY, ÖZGÜR DOĞAN
FALL/SONBAHAR | 2008 OZCAN ALPER
COSMOS | 2009 REHA ERDEM
Cosmos, written and directed by Reha Erdem, starring Sermet Yeşil as a thief and a miracle worker who is welcomed into a tiny, snowbound border village after resuscitating a half-drowned boy. The film, which went on nationwide general release across Turkey on April 16, 2010, won four awards at the 46th Antalya "Golden Orange" International Film Festival, including the Golden Orange for Best Film, which it shared with Bornova Bornova (2009) directed by İnan Temelkuran. The film also won the Golden Apricot at the 2010 Yerevan International Film Festival, Armenia, for Best Feature Film. The film was shot on location in Kars, Turkey.
MOMMO - KIZ KARDEŞIM | 2009
ATALAY TAŞDIKEN
ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA | 2011 NURI BILGE CEYLAN
JÎN | 2013 REHA ERDEM
The movie is about a Kurdish guerilla fighter who deserted her military unit aiming at leaving the conflict region (Eastern Turkey) for the city of Izmir.
Jîn, uses an environmental parable that uses the bitter Turkish-Kurdish conflict as a universal metaphor for the destructive disposition of humanity upon a frail and delicate natural world. Narratively influenced by the tender storytelling of fairy tales, Jîn feels like a contemporary adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood, with the film’s titular protagonist (played brilliantly by Deniz Hasgüler) materializing transcendentally from behind the camouflage of the Turkish woodlands – complete with her red headscarf and surrounded by the serene beauty of nature.
Jîn is part of a small Kurdish guerrilla militia trekking through the opulent landscape. One night she makes her escape, heading through this treacherous woodland unaccompanied. Despite the numerous natural predators impeding her voyage to take care of her ailing grandmother, it’s the human presence of the Turkish army that emerges as the film’s actual ‘big, bad wolf’.
Jîn is an impressive portrait of the biological vivacity of nature, rudely punctuated by the sound of human conflict. Throughout Erdem’s ecological parable, it’s the world of men that’s candidly portrayed as wild and brutal, whilst the tender and compassionate animals (donkey, bear, stag) which enter Jîn’s world, reflecting an ecology astutely resigned to the destructive faculties of mankind.
THOU GILD'ST THE EVEN | SEN AYDINLATIRSIN GECEYI | 2013 ONUR ÜNLÜ
Unlu’s film was not only the winner of the National competition at the Istanbul Film Festival, but also gathered Best Script, Best Editing, and inevitably, the International Film Critics Award.
For the benefit of the bewildered viewers, unfamiliar with Shakespeare’s 28th sonnet used for this film’s title, director Onu Unlu also provides a motto that is easier to handle - Man Is Created By Anxiety, a line which he atributes to Euripides.
Outstandingly shot and framed in black and white, The film is a collection of whimsical, often ironic but also sad, musings on human foibles of every kind, mixing fairytales with social comments and satire with poetry .
It is all about a young man, Cemal (Ali Atay), who has lost his mother and all his siblings in a fire, lives with his father, a barber, and helps him along in the shop. Haunted by the past, sleepwalking in the present, more inside his imagination than in real life, looking for solace and answers that will stop the little wheels from spinning around madly in his head, he pretends to be also a lineman referee in soccer games, the flag in his hand bestowing upon him the kind of authority he never has, otherwise.
A disturbed, suicidal personality, he is treated by a doctor, Irfan (Ercan Kesal), who sheds blood tears and hates the town and its people; rides his moped despondently; falls in love with a girl working on a farm, Yasemin (Demet Evgar), marries and then beats her up, then meets another girl, Defne (Damla Somnez) who suggests poetry might patch up the marriage, after which he tries to shoot the womanizing factory owner he suspects of having had an affair with his wife but finds out his intended victim is immortal. Naturally, every sequence can be interpreted on its own as a metaphor even if it does wrap in a tongue in cheek manner.
WINTER SLEEP | 2014 NURI BILGE CEYLAN
"Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Winter Sleep is a huge, somber and compelling tragicomedy set in Turkey’s vast Anatolian steppe; it moves at the pace of a north Atlantic convoy. This film is avowedly inspired by Anton Chekhov, and since its appearance at this year’s Cannes film festival, critics have specifically identified in it Chekhov’s stories Excellent People (1886) and The Wife (1892), although in an interview with me, the director denied having intended or created any sort of adaptation.
Winter Sleep won the Palme d’Or, and that was a triumph about which I had complicated feelings, perhaps like those of Ian McEwan fans when Amsterdam won the Booker prize in 1998. There was a sense that this wasn’t quite the best contender, nor quite the winner’s own best work – but nevertheless clearly that of a supremely praiseworthy, prizeworthy artist.
It’s a film whose geography has a daunting grandeur: the vast and wintry plain, with its rocky forms, often looks like that of an alien planet, or a planet on which the characters we see are the last humans left. This gigantic setting creates a mesmerizing, if slightly mis-matched context for the pain, pathos and absurdity of a sharply observed, intimate domestic drama.
Haluk Bilginer plays the insufferably conceited Aydin, a retired, middle-aged actor who has inherited his late parents’ provincial hotel out here, along with the freehold of surrounding cottages. Running the business and collecting rent is delegated to his manager Hidayet (Ayberk Pekcan), allowing Aydin the leisure to write a smug, preposterous column for the local paper called the Voice of the Steppe, to bore his guests with memories of having once met Omar Sharif, and to patronize his beautiful young wife Nihal (Melisa Sözen) and divorced sister Necla (Demet Akbag). They have come to hate Aydin – and themselves –for being dependent on his unearned wealth and trapped with him in this icy wasteland, far from the Istanbul they dream about. Bilginer’s performance shows how Aydin has cultivated the style of a worldly man. It is a mask of knowing condescension that does not conceal his own loneliness, disappointment and fear.
Winter Sleep fascinates, saddens and occasionally amuses, at various points on its vast canvas, although I couldn’t help feeling that the landscape’s enormity worked better for Ceylan’s more violently disturbing film Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011), and that the bittersweet Chekhovian pastoral here might have been more intelligible in a more metropolitan or at least less isolated and more socialized setting, such as his Uzak (Distant) of 2002, although I accept the important point is that they are isolated. Tellingly, and touchingly, poor Aydin prides himself on the seriousness of his lost thespian career and on never having done a soap opera. Nihal asks the spiky and self-dramatizing Necla if she hasn’t perhaps been watching too many soap operas. The awful truth is that their life is like a soap opera, but played out with a dreary and glacial slowness, even more oppressive in the hotel’s winter off-season.
The movie has an oceanic swell, or surge of emotion that appears to be building somewhere in its depths, but never quite breaks into a wave.
In fact, the film’s one real dramatic flourish, when Nihal meets Aydin’s resentful tenant Ismail (Nejat Isler), seems overstated and misjudged. The extended dialogue scenes ring truer. Aydin will have long, bitter, subdued conversations with Neclan and Nihal separately, which take place in flickering firelight, as if the end of the world has come and there is no more electricity. They are conversations for which the audience must readjust their sense of conventional dramatic pace, in order to appreciate the unbearable pain and anger that everyone is afraid to express fully, for fear of admitting to the world their own anguish.
The first shot in Winter Sleep is of a smoke or steam wispily rising from the soil (oddly, I thought of the hellish vapour coming from the grate in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver). The land is like a fen or a bayou, alternately icy and muddy, essentially hostile, habitable only at enormous human cost: a vision of its inhabitants’ mental landscape.
Ceylan paints an absorbing, compassionate portrait of people who are making a painful accommodation with each other, and with a world that rejected them long before they thought about rejecting it." Peter Bradshaw Review
SIVAS | 2014 KAAN MÜJDECI
Set in a bleak Anatolian village in Eastern Turkey, Sivas features the story of an eleven year old boy (Aslan) and a weathered fighting dog (Sivas) who develop a strong relationship after Aslan finds Sivas wounded in a ditch, left to die. Meanwhile, a school play of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves dominates the background as Aslan is disappointed in losing the role of the prince to Osman, his rival-in-love and son of the village head.
While Osman gets ahead in the two boys’ race to win the hand of Ayse, the “princess” of the village, Aslan tries to impress her with his new-found friend. And Sivas, having found a new lease on life, wins one fight after another, strengthening Aslan’s hand against Osman. However, as Sivas’s success at the fighting ground attracts more attention by the village head, the roles subtly change and Aslan finds himself in an unexpected crash-course into adulthood, leaving the princess behind.
DUST CLOTH | 2015 AHU ÖZTÜRK
LET’S SIN | 2011 ONUR ÜNLÜ
ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA | 2011 NURI BILGE CEYLAN
BEYOND THE HILL | 2012 EMIN ALPER
LIFELONG 2013 ASLI ÖZGE
FRENZY | 2014 EMIN ALPER
BASKIN | 2015 CAN EVRENOL
It’s an easy night on patrol for Arda, Remzi and the rest of their police unit: a bit of cards, a bit of football, a bit of barbecue. They could never know what to expect when summoned out to support another group of cops at a remote building. And by the time they realize what they’re facing it will be far, far too late.
Evrenol proves himself a master of mood and tone with BASKIN, meticulously crafting a sort of baroque puzzle box sure to provoke a visceral physical response in even the most jaded. While too many young hands are content to shock in the name of horror without ever reaching for true fear, Evrenol goes a step beyond. BASKIN is a film to dread, a film that slips deep into the psyche and uncovers the topography of hidden nightmares.
Less a film to be deconstructed and talked about than it is a film to be experienced – though there’s certainly plenty to deconstruct – BASKIN more than delivers on the promise of Evrenol’s short film work, bringing the young Turk to screens seemingly fully-formed as a new auteur of the horror world. Todd Brown
IVY | 2015 TOLGA KARAÇELIK
An agency boat is taking three new crew members to a bulkcarrier named MV Sarmasik (IVY). The ship is sailing to her loading port in Egypt to carry goods to Angola. As she is sailing south, the shipowner, who was not able to pay salaries to these crew members for quite some time, goes bankrupt. The ship reaches the Egyptian port. The captain and everyone else on board learns that there is a lien on the ship and they are not allowed to get on land nor call the port. The ship is taken to the anchorage area. Officals tell the captain that as sea safety regulations there is a minimum number of crew members that have to stay on the ship. Others can leave. Altogether five seamen volunteer to stay on the ship. They are the ones that need to be away from their home, they are the ones who need the money most amongst the crew. They don’t know how long they are going to stay.
IVY is the story of these six men staying on that ship for a hundred and twenty days. During this period, these men suffer hunger and thirst. They face isolation, day by day paranoia amongst them grows. They argue, divide into groups, transition from wanting to align with the captain to forming an opposition against him… and the ship will turn into a hunting ground. Who will be the winner at the end of this struggle?
MUSTANG | 2015 DENIZ GAMZE ERGÜVEN
Official Selection – Cannes Film Festival 2015 Directors' Fortnight
Special Presentation – Toronto International Film Festival 2015
Winner – Heart of Sarajevo Award, Sarajevo Film Festival 2015
Winner – Europa Cinemas Prize, Cannes Film Festival 2015
Winner – Audience Award, Chicago International Film Festival 2015
Winner – Best First Film Award, Philadelphia Film Festival 2015
COLD OF KALANDAR | 2015 MUSTAFA KARA
Mehmet is a man living with his family in a mountain village near the Black Sea. He earns his life breeding a few animals, while looking for a mineral reserve on the mountains but his pursuit is seen as useless by his family. Destroyed by his search for a mineral reserve, his hope is renewed with the news of a competition.
Mehmet will attend the bull fight held in Artvin, so he devotes his time to training the bull. But Mehmet returns from Artvin completely lost, once again. This simple story pictures the naive portrait of a touching life, and struggle and the relationship between nature, animal and human.
A documentarian must capture a single moment in a miraculous event that occurs in the course of everyday life after patiently pursuing his or her subject for an extended period. And this film proves that its director, Mustafa Kara, is endowed with this special ability. In Kara’s second dramatic feature, there is no distinction between truth and fiction. The protagonists, a family living in a natural setting far from modern civilization, are portrayed with palpable realism. But the inclusion of heartwarming exchanges, cow-training scenes, and fantastic elements prevents the film from being overly realistic. This magnificent paean to humans and nature is an allegory of enduring hope in harsh conditions.
BUTTERFLIES | 2018 TOLGA KARAÇELIK
Close-up of an astronaut’s face. The astronaut is Cemal. Kenan dubs home videos for a living. In a classroom, kindergarten teacher Suzan weeps frantically. They are the sons and daughter of Mazhar. Now, after being 30 years apart, their father calls them back home to their village of Hasanlar. They don’t know why. When they arrive to Hasanlar, they realise that their father is dead and in his will he asks to be buried when the butterflies come to the village to die; one of the many strangeness of this village. Three siblings who neither know each other nor anything about their father will have to kill time in this village while waiting for the time of the butterflies. As they start to find out more about their father and about each other, they also start to know more about themselves.
2018 SUNDANCE World Cinema–Dramatic Grand Jury Prize
THE WILD PEAR TREE | 2018 NURI BILGE CEYLAN
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.
The 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.
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 .
SISTERS | 2019 EMIN ALPER
NOAH LAND | 2019 CENK ERTÜRK
20TH CENTURY
IF MY WIFE CHEATS ME | 1933 MUHSIN ERTUĞRUL
AYSEL BATAKLI DAMIN KIZI | 1935 MUHSIN ERTUĞRUL
THE VICTIM OF LUST | 1940 MUHSIN ERTUĞRUL
BEYOND THE NIGHTS 1960 | METIN ERKSAN
BITTER LIFE | 1962 METIN ERKSAN
THE THREE-WHEELED BICYCLE / TRICYCLE | 1962 LÜTFI Ö. AKAD
STRANGER IN THE CITY | 1962 HALIT REFIĞ
DRY SUMMER | 1963 METIN ERKSAN
ERKEK ALI | 1964 ATIF YILMAZ
GURBET KUSLARI | 1964 HALIT REFIĞ
BEYOND THE WALLS | 1964 ORHAN ELMAS
LAST BIRDS | 1965 ERDOĞAN TOKATLI
TIME TO LOVE | 1965 METIN ERKSAN
ENDLESS ROAD | 1965 DUYGU SAĞIROĞLU
OH BEAUTIFUL ISTANBUL | 1966 ATIF YILMAZ
LOVE STORIES OF THE PALE NIGHT | 1966 ALP ZEKI HEPER
VESIKALI YARIM | 1968 LÜTFI AKAD
HOPE | 1970 YILMAZ GUNEY
DÖNÜŞ | 1972 TÜRKÂN
ŞORAY
BRIDE | 1973 LÜTFI AKAD
CANIM KARDEŞIM | 1973 ERTEM
EĞILMEZ
ARKADAŞ | 1974 YILMAZ
GÜNEY
ZAVALLILAR | 1974 ATIF YILMAZ
MY GIRL WITH THE RED SCARF | 1977 ATIF YILMAZ
NEŞELI GÜNLER | 1978 ORHAN
AKSOY
THE HERD | 1978 ZEKI ÖKTEN
THE ROAD | 1982 ŞERIF GÖREN, YILMAZ GUNEY
ÇIÇEK ABBAS | 1982 SINAN ÇETIN
THE WRESTLER | 1984 ZEKI ÖKTEN
AAAHH BELINDA | 1986 ATIF YILMAZ
MOTHERLAND HOTEL | 1987 ÖMER KAVUR
MR MUHSIN | 1987 YAVUZ TURGUL
ARABESK | 1988 ERTEM
EĞILMEZ
DON'T LET THEM SHOOT THE KITE | 1989 TUNÇ BAŞARAN
SECRET FACE | 1991 ÖMER KAVUR
WHISTLE IF YOU COME BACK | 1992 ORHAN OĞUZ
SOMERSAULT IN A COFFIN | 1996 DERVIŞ ZAIM
THE BANDIT | 1996 YAVUZ TURGUL
INNOCENCE | 1997 ZEKI DEMIRKUBUZ
THE SMALL TOWN | 1997 NURI BILGE CEYLAN
A WIDOWED WOMAN | 1985 ATIF YILMAZ
ZÜĞÜRT AĞA | 1985 NESLI ÇÖLGEÇEN
IPEKÇE | 1987 BILGE OLGAÇ
ON BOAT | 1998 SERDAR AKAR
A SAINT IN LALELI | 1988 KUDRET SABANCI
MY CINEMAS | 1990 FÜRUZAN, GÜLSÜN KARAMUSTAFA
A HEART OF GLASS | 1990 FEHMI YAŞAR
THE UNFORGETTABLE DIRECTOR OF LOVE MOVIES | 1990 YAVUZ
TURGUL
KELEBEKLER SONSUZA UÇAR | 1993 MESUT UÇAKAN
INNOCENCE | 1997 ZEKI DEMIRKUBUZ
CHOLERA STREET | 1997 MUSTAFA ALTIOKLAR
HAMMAM | 1997 FERZAN ÖZPETEK
HER ŞEY ÇOK GÜZEL OLACAK | 1998 ÖMER VARGI
PROPAGANDA | 1999 SINAN ÇETIN
THIRD PAGE | 1999 ZEKI DEMIRKUBUZ
RUN MONEY RUN | 1999 REHA ERDEM
LOLA+BİLİDİKİD | 1999 KUTLUĞ ATAMAN
21ST CENTURY
DISTANT | 2002 NURI BILGE CEYLAN
INNOWHERELAND | 2002 TAYFUN PIRSELIMOGLU
WAITING FOR THE CLOUDS | 2003 YEŞIM USTAOĞLU
HEAD ON | 2004 FATIH AKIN
ANLAT İSTANBUL | 2004 ÜMIT ÜNAL & ÖMÜR ATAY
BOATS OUT OF WATERMELON RINDS | 2004 AHMET ULUÇAY
BABAM VE OĞLUM | 2005 ÇAĞAN IRMAK
DONDURMAM GAYMAK | 2005 YÜKSEL AKSU
HACIVAT KARAGÖZ NEDEN ÖLDÜRÜLDÜ? | 2005 EZEL AKAY
GÖNÜL YARASI | 2005 YAVUZ
TURGUL
KADER | 2006 ZEKI DEMIRKUBUZ
TIMES AND WINDS | 2006 REHA ERDEM
HOKKABAZ | 2006 CEM YILMAZ
TAKVA | 2006 ÖZER KIZILTAN
THE LITTLE APOCALYPSE| 2006 YAĞMUR TAYLAN, DURUL TAYLAN
RECEP İVEDIK | 2007 TOGAN GÖKBAKAR
THE EDGE OF HEAVEN | 2007 FATIH AKIN
EGG | 2007 SEMIH KAPLANOĞLU
RIZA | 2007 TAYFUN PIRSELIMOGLU
MILK | 2008 SEMIH KAPLANOĞLU
SUMMER BOOK | 2008 SEYFI TEOMAN
İKI DIL BIR BAVUL | 2008 ORHAN ESKIKÖY, ÖZGÜR DOĞAN
FALL/SONBAHAR | 2008 OZCAN ALPER
KOSMOS | 2009 REHA ERDEM
MOMMO - KIZ KARDEŞIM | 2009 ATALAY TAŞDIKEN
EYYVAH EYVAH | 2009 HAKAN ALGÜL
VAVIEN | 2009 YAĞMUR
TAYLAN, DURUL TAYLAN
MEN ON THE BRIDGE | 2009 ASLI ÖZGE
AV MEVSIMI | 2010 YAVUZ TURGUL
ANADOLU'NUN KAYIP ŞARKILARI | 2010 NEZIH ÜNEN
MAJORITY | 2010 SEREN YÜCE
HONEY | 2010 SEMIH KAPLANOĞLU
HAIR | 2010 TAYFUN PIRSELIMOGLU
AŞK TESADÜFLERI SEVER | 2011 ÖMER
FARUK SORAK
THE EXTREMELY TRAGIC STORY OF CELAL TAN AND HIS FAMILY | 2011 ONUR ÜNLÜ
OUR GRAND DESPAIR | 2011 SEYFI TEOMAN
JÎN | 2013 REHA ERDEM
CELAL ILE CEREN | 2013 TOGAN GÖKBAKAR
THOU GILD'ST THE EVEN | SEN AYDINLATIRSIN GECEYI | 2013 ONUR
ÜNLÜ
WINTER SLEEP | 2014 NURI BILGE CEYLAN
SIVAS | 2014 KAAN MÜJDECI
DUST CLOTH | 2015 AHU ÖZTÜRK
LET’S SIN | 2011 ONUR ÜNLÜ
ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA | 2011 NURI BILGE CEYLAN
BEYOND THE HILL | 2012 EMIN ALPER
LIFELONG 2013 ASLI ÖZGE
FRENZY | 2014 EMIN ALPER
BASKIN | 2015 CAN EVRENOL
IVY | 2015 TOLGA KARAÇELIK
MUSTANG | 2015 DENIZ GAMZE ERGÜVEN
COLD OF KALANDAR | 2015 MUSTAFA KARA
BUTTERFLIES | 2018 TOLGA KARAÇELIK
THE WILD PEAR TREE | 2018 NURI BILGE CEYLAN
SISTERS | 2019 EMIN ALPER
NOAH LAND | 2019 CENK ERTÜRK
See also : Best of World Cinema According to Mavi Boncuk
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