Turkey

Quote:
‘Maverdi. Won’t you talk to them? Why are you not going over there? They are your kind.’

On a rooftop in Adana, Yusuf cares for the pigeons in his dovecote. His favourite bird is called Maverdi. To lure it even closer, he sometimes puts a seed between his lips for it to peck. The light grey pigeon is an outsider in the dovecote, just as Yusuf is in society, where he has to face ignorance and violence. The young man’s face rarely brightens up, and the pressure from his brother to go out to work makes things even worse. In her debut feature film, Banu Sıvacı evokes a genuine sense of empathy for the apparently fragile then fiercely rebellious loner who is fighting for a small joy that most people seem to begrudge him.Read More »

Ömer Lütfi Akad, aka Lütfi Ömer Akad, (b. 1916) is a Turkish film director, who directed movies from 1948-1974. In 1949, he debuted as a film director with Vurun Kahpeye (“Kill the Whore”) an adaptation of Halide Edip Adıvar’s book of the same title. He became one of the pioneers of the period in the “Director Generation”. The 1970s trilogy, The Bridge; The Wedding; and The Sacrifice, is considered his masterpiece. Afterwards, he withdrew from movie making instead directing adaptations for TV.Read More »

A young woman moves to her new apartment, where one of her new neighbors, a young man living alone, gets interested in her. (IMDb)Read More »

Synopsis:
Coban and his four comrades are smugglers who live in the bleak, inaccessible mountains. They are hard, pitiless men like the county they live in, whose daily commerce is in greed, danger, betrayal and murder.Read More »

Thomas Arslan’s second feature film and part of his Berlin-trilogy is a slow-paced milieu study of German-Turkish youth in Berlin-Kreuzberg. The film depicts the every day life, domestic conflicts, dreams and disappointments of three siblings and their aimless, meandering strolls through the Kreuzberg district. The family itself encapsulates the culture clash that is at the centre of many German-Turkish films. In Arslan’s film, the mother is German, the father is Turkish and the children have to make up their own minds about their cultural allegiances. Seventeen-year-old Leyla tries to escape from her family by spending most of her time with her best friend Sevim. Read More »

The title Forty Square Meters of Germany refers to the shabby apartment where 90% of the film takes place. Ozay Fecht stars in this emotionally-charged drama as an impressionable Turkish girl named Turna, who is taken in by the tall tales spun by migrant worker Dursun (played by Yaman Okay), whom she marries and follows to Germany. But the young bride’s hopes for a better life in Germany are abruptly dashed.Read More »

“Kağıt” (Paper) stars Öner Erkan as Emrah, a young man with a passion to make movies. As he directs his debut film, he hits bureaucratic roadblocks, first in receiving a certificate of eligibility to film on the grounds that it threatens the unity of the state, and later when he finally tries to release the film, the shooting of which proved so difficult. Bureaucrat Müzeyyen (Asuman Dabak) becomes the symbol of Çetin’s dysfunctional and autocratic state, turning every stage of filmmaking into hell. Emrah takes revenge on the woman by kidnapping her.Read More »

Synopsis:
After a mysterious prologue in a Christmas tree ornaments-filled “starscape”, Turkish Clark Kent is told by his parents that he is an Alien from space and that he must leave to accomplish his destiny. They give him a green gem which he takes into a nearby cave. There, Jor-El, minus half of his front teeth, appears and reveals to Clark that he is Superman…Read More »

Mihram is a small time Turkish black marketeer who gambles and drinks too much. Something that bothers both him and his wife, Elif. He wants to better his life and when he hears about the enormous amount of cell phones being sold, he wants to enter that market. For this, he needs money and when the local doctor asks him to get medicine from Azerbaijan for the sick children, he sets out to get the medicine, aided by his crotchety elderly uncle Fazil. (IMDb)Read More »