Turkey

IMDB:
A bag full of money lands in front of you. Is it luck? The answer to your prayers? Part of a predetermined plan? Or all of the above? Set in the chaotic streets of Istanbul, 40 is a story of three strangers making their way in a city of 12 million, all searching…for one bag. Shot entirely on location, ’40’ combines intense story telling with documentary style cinematography embarking on a synchronistic journey dealing with faith, love, luck, destiny, human trafficking…and a bag of cash that falls from the sky.Read More »

Imdb User Review:

Watch it like that you can’t watch any movie after this time,it gives you unbelievable moments…
29 August 2006 | by hashus (Turkey)

Lütfi Akad is one of the most important directors of Turkey, he gave our cinema very useful things, a lot of things started with his camera…he was different, he moved cinema from sets to streets, he gave to watchers real world,real people, no star… his actors didn’t act in front of the camera, they lived in white-screen…

And I think Akad’s the best movie is Vesikali Yarim, because he always directs real stories which everybody can live them, but in this story we can’t find anything from us…but we forgot one important thing : director is Lütfi Akad…so again we find us in the white-screen between actors. He can do this. Although story is not from us, he can move us his movie…In this movie, he asked us “Who deserve the real love?” and “Does love deserve the reality?” I won’t say anything about answers but if you watch this movie, you will see them easily…Read More »

Fate brings together two unhappy people in this drama from Turkish filmmaker Tayfun Pirselimoğlu. Hamdi makes and sells wigs from a small shop in Istanbul. Hamdi isn’t much of a businessman, and doesn’t care much about his shop — or anything else for that matter since he was diagnosed with cancer. One day, a middle-aged woman named Meryem comes into Hamdi’s shop; she has long and beautiful hair, and informs him that she wants to sell it. Hamdi is struck by the woman’s barely concealed anger and sadness, and he wants to know more about her.Read More »

Quote:
Somersault in a Coffin (Turkish: Tabutta Rövaşata) is a 1996 Turkish film, written and directed by Derviş Zaim, about a homeless criminal and car thief. The film, which was released on November 15, 1996, received awards at several international film festivals including the Golden Orange for best film at the Antalya International Film Festival.Read More »

Quote:
Night of Silence is a striking film that focuses on child brides, a most common problem which should never fall off the radar. The story starts with an opulent village wedding in Anatolia. Folk dances, firing guns? and the audience faces the 55-60 year-old groom who couldn?t get married as he spent years in prison, and a child bride, alone in a room. The mood in the room is not what the groom anticipates. The bride struggles to put the groom off and overcome her fears using her wit? The audience stays up all night until the morning with these two people in the nuptial chamber.
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Yilmaz Arslan directed this Turkish-German-Swiss drama. A woman arrives at an apartment building in a German city to visit her friend Hülya (Yelda Reynaud), only to learn that Hülya has returned to Turkey with her aunt and uncle because of an unspecified illness. There are indications Hülya was kidnapped by her family. Back in Turkey, the unhappy Hülya refuses to speak or eat. At the first chance, she escapes, heading back to Germany without money or identity papers. Beginning the arduous journey, she collapses on the road, is taken care of by peasants, locates her estranged mother, has a run-in with police, and is thrown into a women’s mental institution. Dream sequences are intercut throughout. Shown at the 1998 Venice Film Festival.

— Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
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SYNOPSIS/PLOT: A man and a woman seeking refuge from the world: Nihat at a remote forest fire tower, Seher in her room at a rural bus station. When their lives collide, each now has to fight their battle of conscience before the other. Read More »

Synopsis
Several directors from countries of the region were invited to create stories taking place in and around the beautiful city of Istanbul, in the vein of “Paris, je t’aime” and “New York, I love you”. They come together to remind viewers that Istanbul’s history does not belong only to the people of Turkey.Read More »

There isn’t much that can prepare you for the drastic second-half turn of “Araf,” an often-gorgeous drama playing in the Main Slate at the New York Film Festival. Evocative and somewhat alien in equal measure, “Araf” takes place in a withered Turkish countryside that might as well be another planet. We see the economic strife through the lava runoff that occurs in the very first shot of the film, lumbering out of a cauldron, spilling out onto the land. Though fairly mundane within the lives of the characters (one of whom is discussing sex in voiceover as the orange-red substance burns all that lies underneath it), it’s an introduction that rivals the eye-opening early shots of Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus,” though while it was that film’s high point, here it’s an example of a world dying while underdeveloped, neglected, managed and monitored by day laborers barely getting by on their own.Read More »