Sinema Poll | Top 100 Turkish Films

1) Eşkıya (Yavuz Turgul)

2) Selvi Boylum Al Yazmalım (Atıf Yılmaz)

3) Hababam Sınıfı (Ertem Eğilmez)

4) Babam ve Oğlum (Çağan Irmak)

5) Züğüt Ağa (Nesli Çölgeçen)

6) Masumiyet (Zeki Demirkubuz)

7) Ağır Roman (Mustafa Altıoklar)

8) Muhsin Bey (Yavuz Turgul)

9) Yol (Şerif Gören)

10) Neşeli Günler (Orhan Aksoy)

11) Tosun Paşa (Kartal Tibet)

12) Uçurtmayı Vurmasınlar (Tunç Başaran)

13) Vizontele (Yılmaz Erdoğan; Ömer Faruk Sorak)

14) Issız Adam (Çağan Irmak)

15) G.O.R.A. (Ömer Faruk Sorak)

16) Süt Kardeşler (Ertem Eğilmez)

17) Kibar Feyzo (Atıf Yılmaz)

18) Nefes: Vatan Sağolsun (Levent Semerci)

19) Çiçek Abbas (Sinan Çetin)

20) Gemide (Serdar Akar)

21) Kader (Zeki Demirkubuz)

22) Kaybedenler Kulübü (Tolga Örnek)

23) Her Şey Çok Güzel Olacak (Ömer Vargı)

24) Canım Kardeşim (Ertem Eğilmez)

25) Uzak (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

26) Av Mevsimi (Yavuz Turgul)

27) Gönül Yarası (Yavuz Turgul)

28) Anayurt Oteli (Ömer Kavur)

29) Vavien (Yağmur ve Durul Taylan)

30) Üç Maymun (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

31) Sevmek Zamanı (Metin Erksan)

32) Arabesk (Ertem Eğilmez)

33) Sürü (Zeki Ökten)

34) Mustafa Hakkında Her Şey (Çağan Irmak)

35) Kapıcılar Kralı (Zeki Ökten)

36) Umut (Yılmaz Güney)

37) Tabutta Rövaşata (Derviş Zaim)

38) Başka Dilde Aşk (İlksen Başarır)

39) Sonbahar (Özcan Alper)

40) Tatar Ramazan (Melih Gülgen)

41) Bizim Aile (Ergin Orbey)

42) Karpuz Kabuğundan Gemiler Yapmak (Ahmet Uluçay)

43) Susuz Yaz (Metin Erksan)

44) Gülen Gözler (Ertem Eğilmez)

45) Güneşi Gördüm (Mahsun Kırmızıgül)

46) Şekerpare (Atıf Yılmaz)

47) Hacivat Karagöz Neden Öldürüldü? (Ezel Akay)

48) Beynelmilel (Sırrı Süreyya Önder; Muharrem Gülmez)

49) Kosmos (Reha Erdem)

50) Bal (Semih Kaplanoğlu)

51) Ah Nerede (Orhan Aksoy)

52) Dila Hanım (Orhan Aksoy)

53) Sultan (Kartal Tibet)

54) Recep İvedik (Togan Gökbakar)

55) Takva (Özer Kızıltan)

56) Vesikalı Yarim (Ö. Lütfi Akad)

57) Yazı Tura (Uğur Yücel)

58) Yılanların Öcü (Metin Erksan)

59) Anlat İstanbul (Ü. Ünal/K. Sabancı/S. Demirdelen/Y. Yolcu/Ö. Atay)

60) Hokkabaz (Cem Yılmaz; Ali Taner Baltacı)

61) Neredesin Firuze (Ezel Akay)

62) Mavi Boncuk (Ertem Eğilmez)

63) Kurtlar Vadisi Irak (Serdar Akar)

64) Auf der anderen Seite/Yaşamın Kıyısında (Fatih Akın)

65) Aaahh Belinda (Atıf Yılmaz)

66) Namuslu (Ertem Eğilmez)

67) Ah Güzel İstanbul (1966) (Atıf Yılmaz)

68) Otobüs (Tunç Okan)

69) İstanbul Kanatlarımın Altında (Mustafa Altıoklar)

70) Çoğunluk (Seren Yüce)

71) Zübük (Kartal Tibet)

72) Hayat Var (Reha Erdem)

73) Dönüş (Türkan Şoray)

74) Korkuyorum Anne (Reha Erdem)

75) Selamsız Bandosu (Nesli Çölgeçen)

76) Beş Vakit (Reha Erdem)

77) Dondurmam Gaymak (Yüksel Aksu)

78) İklimler (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

79) Teyzem (Halit Refiğ)

80) Piano Piano Bacaksız (Tunç Başaran)

81) Yumurta (Semih Kaplanoğlu)

82) Fikrimin İnce Gülü – Sarı Mercedes (Tunç Okan)

83) Arkadaş (Yılmaz Güney)

84) Turist Ömer (Hulki Saner)

85) Dar Alanda Kısa Paslaşmalar (Serdar Akar)

86) Gurbet Kuşları (Halit Refiğ)

87) Aşk Filmlerinin Unutulmaz Yönetmeni (Yavuz Turgul)

88) Yazgı (Zeki Demirkubuz)

89) İki Dil Bir Bavul (Orhan Eskiköy; Özgür Doğan)

90) Gelin (Ö. Lütfi Akad)

91) Adı Vasfiye (Atıf Yılmaz)

92) Salkım Hanımın Taneleri (Tomris Giritlioğlu)

93) Bereketli Topraklar Üzerinde (Erden Kıral)

94) Mayıs Sıkıntısı (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

95) Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (Çetin İnanç)

96) Acı Hayat (Metin Erksan)

97) Berlin in Berlin (Sinan Çetin)

98) Düttürü Dünya (Zeki Ökten)

99) 9 (Ümit Ünal)

100) Hamam (Ferzan Özpetek)

  

Erden Kiral Tribute at Thessaloniki Film Festival

Erden Kiral Tribute

Film List   Screening Schedule

1.  A Season in Hakkari / Erden Kiral, Turkey-Germany 2.  Conscience / Erden Kiral, Τurkey 3.  On the Fertile Lands / Erden Kiral, Turkey 4.  On the Road / Erden Kiral, Turkey-Bulgaria 5.  The Blue Exile / Erden Kiral, Germany-Turkey-Greece 6.  The Canal / Erden Kiral, Turkey 7.  The Golden Horn / Erden Kiral, Turkey 8.  The Hunter / Erden Kiral, Turkey 9.  The Mirror / Erden Kiral, Turkey-Germany

Erden Kıral. An International Turkish Filmmaker

Erden Kıral is one of the major directors in the history of Turkish cinema. He belongs to the second generation of Turkish auteurs who, influenced by Yılmaz Güney, began making films in a climate of political upheaval. Kıral’s generation – which includes Ömer Kavur, Şerif Gören, Zeki Ökten, Ali Özgentürk, et al. – contributed, during the 70s and 80s – to the development of a sociorealist tradition, critically addressing the country’s social problems, such as class inequality, social injustice, internalmigration, economic underdevelopment and the feudal, patriarchic relations of rural Turkey.
Kıral’s cinema is anthropocentric, with its own, idiosyncratic style and language. He draws on Turkish reality and literature, uses realistic, poetical and symbolic narratives, and tackles subjects such as the struggle of ordinary people to survive, the lack of development of theTurkish provinces, the resilience of feudal relations, the lot of the intellectual, and exile. Relying on his cultural heritage and sensitively conveying the sociopolitical conditions of his country, without once falling into the trap of exoticism, Kıral succeeds in addressing an international audience, thanks to the honesty of his gaze, the universality of his concerns, and the artistic integrity of his films.
Clearly influenced by hismentor, Yılmaz Güney, his two first films are unequivocally left leaning. Based on a true event, Τhe Canal (1978) portrays and critiques the landowning and water management systems in force at the time in rural Turkey. In his next film, On Fertile Lands (1980), Kıral adapted Orhan Kemal’s novel for the screen. In it, with feeling and realism, often bordering on the documentary, he chronicled the trials and tribulations of the workers at the cotton plantations, their moving to the cities, their quest for a better future, their loss of principles in the new, urban environment. Transcending the personal tales of the characters, Kıral manages to present a wider image of post-fifties Turkish social reality. A relentless indictment, the film describes a world that denies its inhabitants any kind of humanism, even the possibility to dream.
The military coup of 1980 and the ban on his two first films – in fact, the copies of On Fertile Lands were stolen and the negatives were found 28 years later, in Sweden – drove Kıral into self-exile in Germany, where he carried out a series of co-productions. In 1983 he presented one of the most significant films of his career, A Season in Hakkari, based on the novel by Ferit Edgü. The film, which won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and made Kıral known throughout Europe, explores with the simplicity of a documentary the culture shock suffered by a teacher – an intellectual– in an isolated village deep in the Turkish hinterland. Allowing ample time to the development of the narrative and basing himself on his powers of observation, Kıral records with ethnographic precision and effectiveness the cultural encounter between the film’s hero and the villagers – through the otherness of whom the protagonist will discover his real self. Next came The Mirror (1984), yet another poetic narrative that examines the psychology of its characters. Based on a popular legend, the story oscillates between dream and reality, reminiscent of Latin American magical realism. It is an elegy of the people of the countryside and their efforts to survive amid a hostile nature, under medieval living conditions and the fear of the aga, which underscores their repressed emotions as well as their sense of honor and dignity.
In 1987 he made Dilan, focusing on people’s inner conflicts through the story of a woman who’s waiting for her lover – but he never comes. This was followed in 1988 by a Turkish production, Time to Hunt, which portrays the period before the 1980 coup, and, after that, yet another European co-production, The Blue Exile (1993). Based on the autobiography of the Turkish intellectual and journalist Cevat Şakir(1890-1973), the film chronicles his long journey into exile – recreating the atmosphere of the period during which Ataturk founded the Republic – as well as the hero’s personal, inner journey of self-knowledge and purification of his past. The film is a poetic meditation, not only on the life of the author, but also on the essence of life itself, and on the things that people should consider important, regardless of social pressures.
His next film, The Hunter (1998), is based on a popular legend about a beautiful woman whose grave is in a lake. Kıral tells her story from different viewpoints, creating a fairy tale atmosphere and placing emphasis on the power of the gaze – an element that often recurs in his work and is indicative of Güney’s influence.What interests him here is the relativity of truth, the origin of violence, human emotions pushed to the limit, and repressed sexuality.
On the Road (2005) is Kıral’s most personal film to date. It involves the fictional representation of an actual event from the life of director Yılmaz Güney. Its starting point is a trip the two filmmakers took together, when Güney was being transferred to another prison, while he was working on his film The Road, the direction of which Güney had originally assigned to Kıral but then changed his mind. Against the backdrop of Turkey’s sociopolitical situation and through the symbolic use of theTurkish landscape, the filmtreats the concepts of alienation and freedom, scrutinizing the psychology and the complex relationship between teacher and student: on the one hand the repressed creativity of the imprisoned Güney, who assigns the direction of his films to others, and on the other hand, the student Kıral’s need to rebel and become intellectually independent of his influence.
Kıral then made Conscience (2008), a film which was especially sensuous for Turkish cinema standards. It tells a tale of passion, obsession and desire between three working class characters with a disastrous outcome. Golden Horn (2010), his last film so far, was the first documentary of his career. Inspired by the black and white photography of Aras Güler, Kıral portrays the Golden Horn in all its magnificence, underscoring the multiculturalism and the peaceful co-existence of different peoples. The camera follows the mental thread of the narrator, a Greek from Constantinople who returns after many years to the place of his birth, blending his childhood memories with the present day.
The Thessaloniki International Film Festival, wishing to honor this great Turkish filmmaker, presents the most extensive tribute to his work ever shown in Europe. Undoubtedly, his complete oeuvre being screened for the first time in Greece is a unique opportunity for the Festival’s Greek and foreign audiences, who have always embraced Turkish cinema.

Dimitris Kerkinos

Readers Select 100 Best Turkish Films

1-EŞKIYA
(Yavuz Turgul/1996)


2-SELVİ BOYLUM AL YAZMALIM
(Atıf Yılmaz/1978)


3-HABABAM SINIFI
(Ertem Eğilmez/ 1975)


4-BABAM VE OĞLUM
(Çağan Irmak/ 2005)


5-ZÜĞÜRT AĞA
(Nesli Çölgeçen/1985)


6-MASUMİYET
(Zeki Demirkubuz/ 1997)


7-AĞIR ROMAN
(Mustafa Altıoklar/ 1997)


8-MUHSİN BEY
(1987)


9-YOL
(Şerif Gören/ 1981)


10-NEŞELİ GÜNLER
(Orhan Aksoy/ 1978) 

Yilmaz Guney

Yılmaz Güney'den Mektup var... from Nasname on Vimeo.

Labirent Trailer

16th LTFF Trailer and Opening Night Gala highlights

16. London Turkish Film Festival | QandA

PASSION CINÉMA 2011 | Turkish Films

PASSION CINÉMA et JOURNÉE MONTAGNES   03-08 October 2011 Ajaccio, Corsica Mommo

Atalay Tasdiken. 1h34. Turquie. Produit en 2009. Drame Avec Elif Bülbül, Mehmet Bülbül, Mete Dönmezer, MustafaUzunyılmaz Synopsis :                             Le film traite du lien extrêmement fort entre un frère et une sœur, Ahmet et Ayse, dont la mère vient de mourir. Leur père se remarie à une autre femme qui ne veut pas d’eux et qui entraîne ce dernier à les délaisser et à finalement les confier à leur grand-père handicapé. Âgé de seulement neuf ans, Ahmet doit donc assumer les rôles de père et de mère pour sa petite sœur. Est-ce que leur solidarité et leur soutien mutuel leur suffira pour rester ensemble ? Pour son premier long métrage, s’inscrivant dans un cinéma réaliste, le réalisateur a choisi de mettre en scène une histoire qui s’est réellement déroulée dans un village d’Anatolie proche de sa campagne natale. Une histoire qui dénonce l’état de pauvreté du monde rural où les adultes n’ont quelquefois pas d’autre choix que d’envoyer leurs enfants travailler chez les nantis d’Istanbul. Atalay Tasdiken réussit à brosser à la fois une peinture très naturaliste d’un village turc contemporain et le portrait de deux enfants, dont la relation de protection et d’attention entre le frère et la sœur… Il était une fois en Anatolie

Grand Prix. Festival de Cannes 2011 Nuri Bilge Ceylan. 2h30. Turquie. Novembre 2011. Drame Avec Yılmaz Erdogan, Taner Birsel, Ahmet Mümtaz Taylan Synopsis :                             La vie dans une petite ville s’apparente à un voyage au milieu des steppes : l’impression que quelque chose « de nouveau et de différent » va surgir derrière chaque colline, mais toujours les mêmes routes monotones, effilées, qui disparaissent ou persistent, infailliblement similaires... Ce grand réalisateur turc, auteur des Climats et des Trois singes, prouve une fois encore avec ce film qu'il est un immense cinéaste. L’histoire nous emmène sur les routes et dans les villages de l'Anatolie, région centrale de la Turquie composée de steppes désolées et monotones. On y suit les tribulations d'un procureur, un médecin légiste, une escouade de policiers et deux prisonniers à la recherche du cadavre que ces derniers ont enterré. Film passionnant ! Une émotion aussi intense qu'inattendue. Le tout superbement photographié et mis en scène… Hair

Tayfun Pirselimoglu. 2h00. Grèce/Turquie. Produit en 2010. Drame

Avec Ruhi Sari, Mehmet Avcı, Nurcan Eren

               

Synopsis :            

               

Dans un quartier délabré d’Istanbul Hamdi, un vendeur de perruques, se sent désespérément seul, passant ses jours et ses nuits dans sa boutique, qui est aussi son domicile. Malgré le peu de temps qui lui reste à vivre, ce fumeur invétéré atteint d’un cancer, continue à enchaîner les cigarettes en fixant une une prostituée vêtue de rouge qui fait le trottoir de l’autre côté de la rue. Convaincu qu’il rapetisse, Hamdi se mesure tous les jours. Il n’espère plus rien avant sa mort, sauf peut-être partir très loin…

Hamburg IFF | Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia 
Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina 2011 | 157 min | OV with english and german s.t. | Colour |




n this long, slow, hypnotic film about a bunch of men looking for a body in the endless eerie Anatolian landscape, Turkey's star director Nuri Bilge Ceylan explores the human condition through side glances and offhand remarks, caring very little about time, especially the viewer’s time, in eventless sequences without conventional action. At the same time, for those willing to take the plunge, it is a deep and haunting work that lingers in the memory.


This event is  presented in cooperation with Freundeskreis Filmfest Hamburg e.V.
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan


Screenplay: Nuri Bilge Ceylan Ebru Ceylan Ercan Kesal


Cast: Muhammet Uzuner Yılmaz Erdoğan Taner Birsel Ahmet Mümtaz Taylan Fırat Tanış Ercan Kesal


Producer: Zeynep Özbatur Atakan Mirsad Purivatra Eda Arikan Ibrahim Sahin Müge Kolat Murat Akdi


Orig. Titel: Bir zamanlar Anadolu'da
Section: Agenda 11
Original language: Turkish
Filmtype: Fiction Feature
DoP: Gökhan Tiryaki
Editor: Bora Gökşingöl, Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Format: 35 mm
World Sales: Zeynofilm | Cihangir Caddesi Derya Palas apt. 34/' Beyoglu-Cihangir | 34433 Istanbul | Turkey | Email: sezgiu@gmail.com
Production Company: Zeyno Film; Prod2006; Turkish Radio & Television (TRT); Imaj; Fida Film; NBC FilmWebsite: http://www.nbcfilm.com/anatolia

Hamburg IFF | Press

Press
Turkey 2010 | 100 min | OV with english and german s.t. | Colour |

In the first half of the 1990’s, on those days when intense skirmish between the Kurdish guerillas and the Turkish government took place, a handful of young journalists were struggling to proclaim the ongoing violations of human rights to the world. In those days of increasing pressure, the office staff fights both to survive and to reveal the facts. Journalism is no longer a profession, but a a matter of life or death for them.

This event is presented in cooperation with Freundeskreis Filmfest Hamburg e.V.

Director: Sedat Yilmaz

Screenplay: Sedat Yilmaz

Cast: Aram Dildar Engin Emre Değer Kadim Yaşar Sezgin Cengiz

Producer: Sedat Yilmaz

Orig. Titel: Press
Section: Agenda 11
Original language: Turkish
Filmtype: Fiction Feature
DoP: Demir Gökdemir
Set Designer: Nevin Do?an
Editor: Sedat Yilmaz
Format: 35 mm

Production Company: Karincalar Film Yapim | Firuzaga Mah. Süngü Sok. Süngü Apt. No: 1/2 | Cihangir-Istanbul | Turkey | Email: sedat@karincalaryapim.com

Website: www.pressfilm.net

Sedat Yilmaz, (*1972) works as a director and producer for cinema an TV. With his own production company Karincalar, he creates commercials and educational films. He also gives workshops in editing.

Hamburg IFF 2011 | Ecumenopolis: City Without Limits

Ecumenopolis: City Without Limits
Turkey, Germany 2011 | 93 min | OV with german s.t. | Colour |


Istanbul wants to play in the big leagues. Last year it was the European City of Culture. It has its heart set on winning the 2020 Olympic bid. And the government wants it to be the financial centre of the region. At fifteen million, its population is twice the size of London’s, and looks set to double by 2030. But the lack of planning regulations means that expansion has come without adequate environmental or safety precautions. As one interviewee warns, for Istanbul the future means chaos.


Director: İmre Azem


Screenplay: İmre Azem


Producer: Gaye Günay Stephan Anspichler


Orig. Titel: Ekümenopolis: Ucu Olmayan Şehir
Section: Three Colours Green
Original language: English/Turkish
Filmtype: Documentary Feature
Music: Lari Dilmen, Nilüfer Ormanli
DoP: Hakan Yonat, ?enol Altun, İmre Azem
Editor: Eray Ilhan, Arzu Volkan
Format: HDCam


World Sales: Studio Hamburg Distribution & Marketing GmbH | Jenfelder Allee 80 | 22039 Hamburg | Germany | Phone: +49 40 6688-5355 | Email: distribution@studio-hamburg.de
Production Company: York Street Productions International Ltd.


Website: www.ekumenopolis.net

Imre Azem (*1975) studied political sciences and French literature among other things in Moscow, New Orleans and Paris. For his feature debut Ecumenopolis he moved back to his native Istanbul.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is Official

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is the official candidate for an Academy Award.

• New York Times, "Inquiry Into a Haunting Land Could Grab Palme d'Or", by Manohla Dargis
• Time Out (London), "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia", by Dave Calhoun
• Variety, "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia", by Justin Chang
• Screen International, "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia", by Dan Fainaru
• Indiewire, "'Once Upon a Time in Anatolia' is a Mesmerizing Police Procedural", by Eric Kohn
• The Hollywood Reporter, "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia", by Deborah Young
• The Film Stage, "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia", by Raffi Asdourian
• Mubi, "Cannes 2011: Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia", by David Hudson
• The Lumière Reader, "Time Crimes: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia", by Jacob Powell
• Sounds like cinema, "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia", by Greg Bennett
• Fest21, "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia", by Vanessa McMahon
• Cinemascope, "Toronto FF countdown", by Robert Koehler

London 2011 | Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Ceylan’s most audacious film yet is a measured, masterly account of a police investigation, Chekhovian in its piercing insights, subtle wit and thematic richness. 

Alongside The Tree of Life, Ceylan's Grand Prix-winner was widely regarded as the most rewardingly audacious film in Cannes this year. Its lithe if meticulously constructed story, starting at dusk and ending around the middle of the next day, follows the search by police, prosecutors, a doctor and the alleged culprit for the body of a man buried in the Anatolian steppes (but where exactly?) after a brawl. From this slow yet wholly engrossing account of a rambling, shambling investigation that steadily shifts focus from a group of mostly garrulous characters to the aforementioned doctor, Ceylan fashions a richly quizzical meditation on a range of interwoven themes: the concerns and manners of provincial life; our relationship with the places we inhabit; the balancing of ethics and pragmatism; our need to hold on to the banalities of life when faced with misfortune, absurdity and death. And more; even by his own remarkable standards, this is hugely impressive. The piercing insights and dry wit, the feel for the subtle rhythms of human interaction, the beautiful, superbly expressive Scope images confirm Ceylan's status as a master of cinema.


Geoff Andrew


Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Running time 157 min 
Year 2011
Directed by: Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Country: Turkey-Bosnia-Herzegovina 
Writer: Ercan Kesal, Ebru Ceylan, Nuri Bilge Ceylan 
Cast: Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan, Taner Birsel, Firat Tanis 
Distributor: New Wave Films 

London IFF 2011 | Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Oct 17)

Mon 17

| 20:30

| Vue Screen 7

FULLY BOOKED


It's a police procedural by the Turkish film-maker Nuri Bilge Ceylan, which means that it is long and deliberate and pruned of anything resembling CSI-style thrills. But stay with it. Follow in the footsteps of Ceylan's protagonists (the cops, doctor, prosecutor and suspects) as they hunt a body in the barrens and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia casts an extraordinary spell. It's arguably the director's most muscular, most fully realised film to date, and deservedly won the grand prix at the 2011 Cannes film festival (a prize it shared with the Dardennes' similarly fine The Kid With a Bike, which also screens at this year's LFF).

Turkish Film for Academy Award Nomination

The Academy Award [1] for Best Foreign Language Film will be nominated for out of this list of seven films.

Selim Demirdelen 'Kavşak', Orhan Oğuz 'Hayde Bre', Derviş Zaim 'Gölgeler ve Suretler', Handan İpekçi 'Çınar Ağacı', Nuri Bilge Ceylan  'Bir Zamanlar Anadolu'da', Seyfi Teoman  'Bizim Büyük Çaresizliğimiz' and  Seren Yüce 'Çoğunluk'.

[1] The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is one of the Academy Awards of Merit, popularly known as the Oscars, handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to afeature-length motion picture produced outside the United States of America with a predominantly non-English dialogue track.

Unlike other Academy Awards, the Best Foreign Language Film Award is not presented to a specific individual. It is accepted by the winning film's director, but is considered an award for the submitting country as a whole. Over the years, the Best Foreign Language Film Award and its predecessors have been given almost exclusively to European films: out of the 63 Awards handed out by the Academy since 1947 to foreign language films, fifty one have gone to European films, five to Asian films, three to African films and three to films from the Americas.

London Film Festival 2011 | Law of the Border

Mavi Boncuk |


London Film Festival 2011

Law of the Border 


 Tue 25 | 18:30 | NFT3


Powerful and radical smuggling drama from Turkey, starring the great Yilmaz Güney, rescued and restored by Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation. The happy outcome of another rescue mission by Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation, created to help archives in developing countries preserve their cinema heritage, Law of the Border marked the beginning of Turkey's 'New Cinema' movement, focusing on the country's profound social problems. Brought to light by WCF advisory board member Fatih Akin and restored by L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in Bologna from the wreckage of a single positive print which survived the Turkish military coup d'état in 1980, the film highlights the deprivations of daily life in South-East Turkey – lack of education, no agriculture, unemployment – and their solution: smuggling. Akad's film has the stylistic qualities of an epic Western – '...a work of great visual and dramatic force, of terrific purity and ferocity,' as Kent Jones, executive director of the WCF, puts it – and was a positive influence on the film's scriptwriter and star, Yilmaz Güney, about to make his own directing debut and become Turkey's best-known radical filmmaker and thorn in the government's side, condemned to a life of political imprisonment and eventual exile in Switzerland.


Clyde Jeavons


Law of the Border
Country: Turkey:  Running time: 74min Year :1966
Director: Ömer Lüfti Akad:  Writer: Ömer Lüfti Akad, Yilmaz Güney
Cast: Yilmaz Güney, Pervin Par, Hikmet Olgun, Erol Tas, Tuncel Kurtiz:

TIFF 2011 | When We Leave

When We Leave
Feo Aladag
Country: Turkey/Germany
Year: 2010
Runtime: 119 min minutes
Screens as part of Human Rights Watch


Based on a highly publicized honour killing in Berlin in 2005, When We Leave stars Sibel Kekilli as Umay, a young Turkish Muslim woman who courageously decides to leave her abusive husband in Istanbul and join her family in Germany with her young son. Her reunion with her parents and siblings soon reveals that cultural ties are strong and her family’s love is not unconditional. Umay’s struggle for independence in a patriarchal society bound by tradition and pride makes for a passionately dramatic film that provocatively explores issues of family, community values and personal freedom.


See Also

Turkish Cinema Newsletter: Audience Award for Feo Aladag's Die ...

Feb 01, 2011

DIE FREMDE by Feo Aladag, Germany | AUDIENCE AWARD EUROPEAN FEATURE FILMS | 20 000 € (Ville d'Angers, Fondation Groupama Gan pour le Cinéma et Le Monde) to the French distributor for the promotion of the ...

http://turkfilm.blogspot.com/

When We Leave (Die Fremde) by Feo Aladag

Jan 22, 2010

Feo Aladag was born in 1972 in Vienna. She began her career as an actress, completing her training in London and Vienna from 1990-1995. While studying Acting she completed a Master in Psychology and Journalism, continuing on to receive ...

http://turkfilm.blogspot.com/

Europe's LUX prize goes to When We Leave

Nov 24, 2010

The European Parliament's president Jerzy Buzek presented the award to Aladağ at a special ceremony today (24 Nov). She is the first female director to be shortlisted since the award began in 2007. The award carries a cash prize of ...

http://turkfilm.blogspot.com/

65 countries vie for 2010 Foreign Language Film Oscar®

Oct 16, 2010

Germany, “When We Leave,” Feo Aladag, director; Greece, “Dogtooth,” Yorgos Lanthimos, director; Greenland, “Nuummioq,” Otto Rosing and Torben Bech, directors; Hong Kong, “Echoes of the Rainbow,” Alex Law, director; ...

http://turkfilm.blogspot.com/