Turkish

Seni seviyorum Rosa is The first film of Turkish female novelist and screenwriter Isil Özgentürk is based on a highly praised novel, Tanta Rosa by another woman writer, Sevgi Soysal. The heroine comes from a non-Muslim family in the days when Istanbul used to be a melting pot of diverse cultures and religions. We follow Rosa from her childhood in her well-to-do family until her old age, her life changing with the destiny of Istanbul, which serves as a background to this story of life, love and disillusionment. Özgentürk lets the story unfold like a tale from the Arabian Nights, not forgetting to pass along a message or two for female audiences. The film received the Special Jury Prize of the Istanbul Film Festival in 1992 and travelled to major international film festivals. (~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide)Read More »

The Yellow Mercedes
A black comedy about the misadventures of a Turkish Gastarbeiter (guest worker) who returns to his village with the Mercedes Benz he buys with his hard-earned money.
Bayram comes to Germany from Turkey to work. He saves money and manages to buy a Mercedes. He tries to go to his home town by driving the Mercedes. On his way back, he faces various troubles. The film comically depicts a man who is obsessive about his Mercedes.Read More »

Turkish Cypriot filmmaker Derviş Zaim’s most recent directorial effort, “Gölgeler ve Suretler” (Shadows and Faces) in which he tackles the inter-communal violence his homeland experienced in the 1960s, through the story of a father and daughter.

Shadow and Faces is the coming-of-age story of a young girl who is separated from her father, a Karagöz shadow play master, during the beginning of the conflict between Turks and Greeks in Cyprus in 1963. With a backdrop of extraordinary natural beauty, the experiences of the villagers fleeing from their village in the Island’s Karpas region to the relatively secure but alienating city sheds light on the story of Cyprus.Read More »

This film was inspired by a chapter from the Quran. It is a post-apocalyptic story set in a world where those that survive, are divided between the remnants of cities and agricultural zones. Both of these factions are ruled by corporations and populated by elites. In the areas called Dead Lands, genetically incompatible immigrants suffer from drought and epidemics.Read More »

Suat, who still lives with his mother, father and sister, works at his father’s store in his spare time after practicing as goalkeeper for Esnaf Spor, an amateur football team. Approaching his 30s, Suat is in love with Nurten, the neighborhood beauty, but she has never responded to any of the many secret letters he has sent to her. The whole neighborhood’s greatest wish is for Esnaf Spor to win the amateur football league championship, which would also give them a shot at becoming a professional club. The opportunity to go professional gets the small-time powers that be into action. Serkan, a player who was hurriedly transferred to Esnaf Spor has his first sexual experience with Aynur, a prostitute of living in a house outside the town. Serkan’s transfer affects the girls of the neighborhood more than the team… (movies.yahoo.com)Read More »

Driven by the desire to see his son get an education and rise out of their level of abject poverty, a peasant father takes his boy to Istanbul to look for the advantages that were missing in his life. He hopes to find a good job so he can send his son to school, but as time goes by it seems they can barely make their way around the city and stay out of debt, let alone get ahead. Besides, the police always seem to be after them for one thing or another. Director Ali Özgentürk was arrested before he completed shooting this film, with no reason given for his arrest — as the content of his film suggests, this is not an unusual occurrence. He was later released.
— Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide.Read More »

Why Can’t I Be Tarkovsky? (Neden Tarkovski Olamiyorum…) by Murat Düzgünoğlu (2014, 95 min.). Bahadır, an aspiring 35-year-old director, earns his living making cheap television films inspired by the stories behind Anatolian folk songs. His dream is to make films like his idol, Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, though it seems that everything stands between him and his ambition.

This low-key, tragicomic story presents us with a glimpse of the life of Bahadir, director of TV movies, who dreams of making artistically ambitious films like those of his idol, Andrei Tarkovsky.Read More »

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A sequel to Laleli’de Bir Azize, and with the collaboration of practically the same team, Gemide is the story of four sailors who sit around the ship and spend their time smoking pot. Their routine life turns upside down when one of them gets mugged and badly beaten.Read More »

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Motherland Hotel (Anayurt Oteli) is a 1986 Turkish film directed by Ömer Kavur. It is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Yusuf Atılgan.

Zebercet owns a hotel in a small provincial town. He 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.Read More »