The film had its world premiere on February 1, 2025, at the 54th International Film Festival Rotterdam.
Filming which received support from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism's Directorate General of Cinema and Eurimages, was completed in Söke and Istanbul. The film's Turkish release is planned for the fall.
Famous film director Levent (45), the honorary guest of Soke Film Festival from Istanbul, is completely unaware of Aliye (25), a housekeeper at the hotel where he is staying. However, Aliye, who is trying to tailor a new life story for herself, knows Levent and his films very well. Aliye's intriguing story brings together these two distant people with completely different lives. Now, they have to choose between reality and fiction.
And The Rest Will Follow| O da Bir Şey mi
114 min. Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania
Release date: February 1, 2025 (Rotterdam), April 19, 2025 (İstanbul)
Directed and Written by Pelin Esmer; Produced by Dilde Mahalli (Rosa Film), Pelin Esmer
(Sinefilm) ve Kerem Çatay (Ay Yapım); Cinematography by: Barbu Balasoiu;
Edited by Özcan Vardar
Cast: Timuçin Esen as Levent; Merve Asya Özgür as Aliye; İpek Bilgin as Nigâr;
Nur Sürer as Gülistan; Mehmet Kurtuluş as Lawyer; Ahmet Sönmez; Şebnem Hassanisoughi as Aynur; Asiye Dinçsoy as Emine
Aliye (25) a young hotel housekeeper has never left her small town Söke where time runs slower, quieter and less promising compared to Istanbul, the home town of well-known film director Levent (45). Aliye sees Levent under the stage lights as an honored guest of the Söke Film Festival, whereas he sees only her arm through the velvet curtain drawn across a service window between the hotel bar and kitchen where she serves clean glasses to the bar counter. All night he watches her arm from the bar side of the curtain while on her kitchen side she stalks and listens to the bar regulars competing with the dramas of their life stories in the presence of this famous director. Wait till you hear mine, she says to herself one day and starts her story she meticulously dreams and lives, slowly recording a tailor made life story for herself. Aliye's voice recordings slowly leak into Levent's life in Istanbul as he is at the edge of an end of story with his wife. Listening to this invisible young woman carries him to some moments from his past that have been waiting until today to shade into a reflective film which will eventually bring him once again to Aliye's town Söke. Levent, sitting again at the bar side of the velvet curtain, this time hearing Aliye's true story from someone else, thinks her life would make a beautiful film and asks her to appear in real. Having listened to her own true story behind the other side of the curtain, Aliye seems more interested in the character she has created by her own hands and leaves the truth to the others.
[1] Pelin Esmer (born 3 May 1972, Istanbul) is a Turkish Film director, screenwriter and film producer.
Pelin Esmer studied sociology at the social sciences department of Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. She made her first short documentary, Koleksiyoncu (The Collector) about her uncle Mithat Esmer, who is also the main character of her first fiction feature, 10 to 11 (2009). Her 2005 work, Oyun, was filmed in Arslanköy and documents the efforts of a group of peasant women who produce a play based on their lives. Her 2012 film, Watchtower, earned five awards, including Best Director at the Adana Golden Boll Film Festival.
Filmography
2002 Koleksiyoncu: The Collector (documentary)
2005 Oyun (documentary)
2009 10 to 11
2012 Watchtower
2017 Something Useful
2019 Queen Lear
2025 And The Rest Will Follow
Awards
Yilmaz Güney Award at the Adana Golden Boll Film Festival
2006 (for Oyun)
Best film from the Black Sea region 2006 (for Oyun)
Best film and best script at the Adana Golden Boll Film
Festival 2009 (for 10 to 11)
Best young filmmaker from the Middle East region at the
Middle East Film Festival Abu Dhabi in 2009 (for 10 to 11)
REVIEW 1
IFFR
2025 review: And the Rest Will Follow (Pelin Esmer)
“If this film proves anything it is that Pelin Esmer is a
gifted storyteller, capable of weaving together lives that you imagine would
never have crossed paths if it weren’t for her story.”
What are we, but our life story? Yet Aliye (Merve Asya
Özgür), a housekeeper at an old hotel in a small town, prefers to replace her
own story, in which she is a struggling woman who has to carry the name of her
father’s former lover, with far more interesting ones, such as those of the
guests in her hotel. She is a fan of a famous director, Levent (Timuçin Esen),
who she admires from afar during a Q&A after a screening at a local
festival. While working in the kitchen behind the bar, she overhears the local
patrons tell Levent their stories, in hope of becoming the center of one of his
films. All Levent sees is the arm through the small window between bar and
kitchen. When Aliye decides to tell him her life story by sending him voice
messages, Levent becomes intrigued by this mysterious woman and starts to form
a story of his own to forget about the drama he just ended, that of his
marriage. As they draw closer together, if not physically then at least in
their stories, tales real and imagined start to blend.
In And the Rest Will Follow, Turkish director Pelin Esmer’s seventh film, the stories we tell each other are central, so it should be no surprise that narrative and story structure are the main selling points. What started with Esmer seeing a woman’s arm through a service window (much like one of her protagonists sees the other in her film) becomes an intricate tale of two people distant from each other in class, age, and also a geographical sense. And the Rest Will Follow is a film that requires full attention to keep track of the stories the two central characters tell each other and themselves, and in all honesty some of the plot strands that evolve from this do not fully land. A plotline of Levent shooting a short film that will bring him back to the small town of Söke, employing elements of Aliye and Levent’s own stories, doesn’t fit well into the narrative framework of the film, however amusing we find the young boy at the heart of that short (played by a cheeky Oğuz Kara).
With such fcus on story and structure, almost inevitably
the other aspects of the film play second fiddle when it comes to drawing
attention. Esmer’s direction is assured but sober, with little flight of fancy.
The performances of the cast are solid, with Esen a particular standout, but
won’t linger for too long. Barbu Bălășoiu’s lush cinematography is particularly
noteworthy, with its saturated colors warming up the interiors of the hotel
that is central to the film and the two protagonists. But everything circles
back to, and is in service of, the storytelling of And the Rest Will Follow. If
this film proves anything it is that Pelin Esmer is a gifted storyteller,
capable of weaving together lives that you imagine would never have crossed
paths if it weren’t for her story. As one of the characters says, “Who cares
about the truth” if the story is good?
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