TIFF 2011 | Future Lasts Forever by Özcan Alper

TIFF The Toronto International Film Festival is the leading public film festival in the world, screening more than 300 films from 60+ countries every September.Contemporary World Cinema
Future Lasts Forever Gelecek Uzun Surer by Özcan Alper

Özcan Alper’s second feature film is many things. Visually, it is a stunning work, featuring some of the finest cinematography I have seen this year and capturing the unique Turkish countryside in its many moods. It is also a love story with a twist, as one half of its central couple is absent for virtually the whole narrative. And to give the film an extra dimension and edge: it confronts the Kurdish reality within Turkey.

Future Lasts Forever is an achingly reflective road movie (with a few inside references to one of the masters of this form, Wim Wenders), tracing a young Turkish woman’s voyage to find her Kurdish lover, who has left to take up the fight of his people. Sumru (Gaye Gürsel), an ethnomusicologist armed with a tape recorder, decides to find and record the elegies, or testimonies, of Kurdish survivors of Turkish atrocities. These are eloquently delivered, mostly by women whose men have been killed — often right before their eyes. But the underlying reason for Sumru’s trip is to find the man who claimed her heart.

At her first stop, the city of Diyarbakir, Sumru meets another man who shares her interests, and soon the two find themselves spending more and more time together. But Alper confounds narrative expectations: even as this new couple continues their voyage together, romantic involvement is not his focus. Instead, his attention rests on people trapped in the past, fumbling to make sense of events that have changed their lives. The silent, enduring landscape is always there, a kind of mute witness to the living and the dead. How can such tragedy exist amid so much beauty?

A film of memories — personal, collective and historic — Future Lasts Forever marks the maturation of an exciting new Turkish talent. Alper pauses and observes, creating quiet emotional moments of devastating power as his heroine moves closer and closer to solving the mystery of her lover’s disappearance.
Piers Handling

Özcan Alper was born in Artvin, Turkey. He studied physics and history of science at Istanbul University. His feature films are Autumn (08) and Future Lasts Forever (11).


Country: Turkey/France/Germany
Year:2011
Language: Turkish, Kurdish, Armenian, Hemshince
Runtime: 108 minutes ; Format:DCP(D-Cinema)
Executive Producer: C. Asli Filiz ;Producer: Ersin Celik, Soner Alper
Production Company: Nar Film[1] /Unafilm/Arizona Films
Principal Cast: Gaye Gursel, Durukan Ordu, Sarkis Seropyan, Osman Karakoc, Erdal Kirik
Screenplay:Özcan Alper; Cinematographer:Feza Caldiran; Editor: Ayhan Ergursel, Thomas Balkenhol, Özcan Alper, Umut Sakallioglu; Sound: Mohammed Mokhtary; Music: Mustafa Biber; Production Designer:Tolunay Turkoz

A film of memories, we follow a young ethnomusicologist who leaves Istanbul in search of her Kurdish lover. Along the way she records testimonies of Kurdish survivors, meets a young man who shares her interests and gradually gets closer to resolving what has happened to her friend.

[1] Nar Film was founded in 2009 by Özcan Alper, Ersin Çelik and Soner Alper. 'Autumn', the previous film of Özcan Alper was also included in the line-up of Nar Film after its foundation. Nar Film produced the new project of Özcan Alper, 'Future Lasts Forever'.

Nar Film plans to continue to produce feature and documentary films and intends to provide production services to the international projects as well as bringing art-house international films to a Turkish audience.
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