Turkish Films | NH25 Wrocław, Poland

NH25 New Horizons International Film Festival Wrocław, Poland

For over twenty years, the BNP Paribas New Horizons International Film Festival has been presenting films by auteurs, visionaries, experimenters and rebels. The first edition of the event, created by Roman Gutek, took place in 2001 in Sanok. Later, New Horizons was hosted in Cieszyn (2002-2005), and since 2006 it has been associated with Wrocław.

Films that remained?

Distant Nuri Bilge Ceylan 

Uzak Turkey 2002 / 110’ subtitles: Polish and English 

In Distant (Uzak), the last part of the triptych including The Town (Kasaba) and Clouds of May (Mayis sikintisi), Ceylan’s characters meet in Istanbul. Emin Toprak plays a young man who in the previous films dreamt of escaping the countryside and who finally decides to leave his hometown. He intends to find a job on a ship, to start a journey and begin to live for real. His extended visit is surprising at first and then irritating for his relative in the city - an artist (played by Muzaffer Özdemir), who lives alone, cut off from his Asian roots. He, too, will have to confront his own lack of fulfilment. It is snowing in Istanbul. This is a rare phenomenon. Snow in Istanbul is dense and wet, falling in big flakes on palms and mosques. The character played by Toprak loses his dream of the city and his illusions, he fails to achieve anything. The city rejects him. It is submerged in foggy white as in a never-existing Atlantis. It is lively, filled with people, lights, objects serving no-one knows what. In this city, the main character cannot find his place or space to make his dreams come true. The ambiguous, silent relationship between the cousins is a reflection of the essence of Turkish nature, a melancholic tear between tradition and modernity, hope and misery. The film was dedicated to the memory of Emin Toprak, who committed suicide in December 2002. 

Agnieszka Szeffel 

awards 

Cannes IFF 2003 - Grand Prize of the Jury & Best Actors 

San Sebástian IFF 2003 - FIPRESCI Film of the Year 

Istanbul IFF 2003 - Best Turkish Director of the Year, Best Turkish Film of the Year, 

FIPRESCI Award 

Discoveries

The Things You Kill 

Alireza Khatami 

France, Poland, Canada, Turkey 2025 / 114’ subtitles: Polish and English 

An elegant home, a nice car, a comfortable life. On the surface, Ali — played by popular Turkish actor Ekin Koç, known from Emin Alper’s Burning Days (23rd NH) and the hit series The Magnificent Century — seems to have it all. Educated in the US, he teaches at a university, but something in his life has stalled. His seriously ill mother requires growing attention, the university is looking to sideline him, and he and his wife, who are trying to have a child, are hit with devastating test results showing infertility. His only real peace comes on a mountain plot of land where he escapes to recharge. Even there, though, he could use help, which comes in the form of Reza (Erkan Kolçak Köstendil), a gardener who urges him to take control of his life and to “be a man.” But what does that really mean? What kind of masculinity will Ali choose? Awarded for directing at Sundance, Alireza Khatami crafts an unsettling story that shifts between psychological drama and an offbeat western. Using the motif of the double, he examines the demands placed on modern men and the ways they perceive themselves — ambiguities that are deepened by the striking cinematography of Bartosz Świniarski in The Things You Kill.