from wiki:
Uçurtmayı Vurmasınlar (English title: Don’t Let Them Shoot the Kite) is a 1989 Turkish drama film directed by Tunç Başaran. It tells the story of political prisoners in Turkey from the eyes of a child. It is one of the most remembered works in its genre, along with pre-military coup pieces such as Maden.
It won four Golden Orange awards: best film, best actress (Nur Sürer), best screenplay (Feride Çiçekoğlu) and best cinematography (Erdal Kahraman).Read More »
Quote:
How is it that the same movie can seem tedious on first viewing and absorbing on the second? Why doesn’t it grow even more tedious? In the case of “Distant,” which I first saw at Cannes in 2003, perhaps it helped that I knew what the story offered and what it did not offer, and was able to see it again without expecting what would not come.Read More »
Synopsis:
This is a movie within movie, which is almost recursive, i.e., the movie inside looks like director Ceylan’s previous movie, Kasaba. It is about the movie director, Muzaffer, going back to his hometown to make a movie using a cast of local people. While Muzaffer is around, his mother complains about simple health problems, his father is in a legal fight against the government for his land, his cousin gets out of his job to help Muzaffer who promises him to find a job in Istanbul, and his little cousin Ali tries to carry an egg in his pocket for 40 days so that he’ll get the watch of his dreams. In the meantime, they get to form the cast for Muzaffer’s movie as wellRead More »
A young man in a small town in Turkey inherits a hotel from his parents in this disturbing drama. Zebercet (Macid Koper) falls for a pretty guest who promises to return the following week. When the woman fails to show up, Zebercet descends into psychopathic madness. He sleeps in the room previously occupied by the young woman and neglects his potential guests. After rejecting the homosexual advances of a young stranger, Zebercet rapes and strangles a hotel maid and kills her cat. Serra Yilmaz and Orhan Cagman co-star with Macid Koper, who gives an excellent performance of the disturbed killer. — Dan PavlidesRead More »
A young woman may be forced to pay with her life for an innocent mistake in this drama from director Mehmet Guleryuz. Havar, meaning ‘cry for help’ in Kurdish, is the name of the young female protagonist living in the remote Turkish village of Batman, notorious for its honour killings. Havar (Cicek Tekdemir) is a teenager living in a rural community in Turkey with her family. One day, Havar is sent down to the river to wash the family’s clothes, and while scrubbing the laundry her scarf slips off. A boy named Sedat (Edip Dogan) hands it to her, and while there was nothing untoward in this act, Havar’s grandmother is certain this is a sign of some sort of inappropriate behavior. Word circulates through the village that Havar’s virtue has been compromised, and her father Osama (Abdullah Tarhan) receives word from his brother (Ramazan Ilten) that his son is backing out of his arranged marriage to Havar after hearing the rumors.Read More »
Quote:
It would be unfair to call Sinan Çetin just a filmmaker, despite the broadness of the term. He has remained a hovering presence over Turkey’s pop culture for two decades whether he makes movies or, as is generally the case, does not. Çetin is a persona who is much larger than the sum of his parts.
It’s a rule of thumb that nearly all popular figures generate their unique brand of devoted fans and followers, along with haters of a similar fervor. With Çetin, the number of fans and followers has diminished and are arrayed against an impressive number of detractors that include other filmmakers, movie critics and viewers.
The director, however, has chosen to show the finger to anyone who deigns to tarnish his work and his persona and has managed to maintain his position in Turkey’s culture scene and his currency among the artistic elite.Read More »
After receiving a letter from a woman named Asiye asking for help to save her, the President of the Associations Against Prostitution visits the brothel to save Asiye. However, she finds herself in a strange musical show.Read More »
Quote:
In a competition where no title had won widespread approval, a superb film finally arrived, drawing more than a few tears of emotion from Berlin festival-goers: acclaimed director Semih Kaplanoglu’s German/Turkish co-production Honey. The third instalment in the Yusuf trilogy, closes a journey backwards in time that began with Egg, followed by Milk.Read More »
Synopsis:
Yekta, 11 years old, is born and still lives in a mysterious, castle-like house, at the shore of the Bosphorus, together with her lame seagull, her spinster aunt, Nukhet Seza, and her grandfather, Sirri, paralyzed and bedridden, following the death of his son and bride. The bedroom of her mother is the place where Yekta takes shelter in, to daydream and hide her secrets. All she knows about her mother is that she had left one day in a little boat on the Bosphorus and that she would never return.Read More »