Famous film director Levent (45), the honorary guest of Söke Film Festival from İstanbul, 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.
O da Bir Şey mi / And The Rest Will Follow 2025 LINK
DCP, Color, 114', Turkish, Aspect Ratio 1.85:1 (FLAT) Dolby Digital
Countries of Production:Türkiye - Bulgaria - Romania
Wait till you hear mine, she says to herself one day and starts her story she meticulously dreams and lives, slowly recording a tailormade life story for herself. Aliye’s voice recordings slowly leak into Levent’s life in İstanbul 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.
Credits
Director: Pelin Esmer; Screenplay: Pelin Esmer; Producers: Dilde Mahalli; Pelin Esmer; Kerem Çatay ; Co-Producers: Poli Angelova (Screening Emotions, BG); Nikolay Todorov (Screening Emotions, BG); Tudor Giurgiu (Libra Films, RO); Associate Producers:Esra Kutlu, Bogdan Craciun
Supported by: Eurimages; T.C. Kültür Bakanlığı Sinema Genel Müdürlüğü; Bulgarian National Film Center
Director of Photography: Barbu Balasoiu
Editing: Özcan Vardar; Art Director: Elif Taşcıoğlu; Set Designer & Consulting Architect: Cem Sorguç; Sound: Samet Yılmaz; Sound Design: Aleksandar Simeonov; Sound Mix: Aleksandar Simeonov, Ivan Andreev; Executive Producer : Selim Güntürkün; Costume: Merve Ertan
Post-production Studios: Abt (istanbul); Geniuspark (istanbul); Sonus Film Post (sofya); Avanpost (bükreş)
INTERNATIONAL PRESS Brigitta PORTIER
brigittaportier@alibicommunications.be
Whatsapp :+32477982584 www.alibicommunications.be
PRODUCER ROSA FILM DİLDE MAHALLİ
dmhalli@gmail.com Whatsapp :+905326315280
Pelin Esmer studied sociology at Boğaziçi University before continuing her education at Yavuz Özkan’s Z1 Film Workshop. She worked as an assistant director on documentary and fiction films before founding her own film company, Sinefilm. She began making independent films in 2001, directing The Collector, The Play, 10 to 11, Watchtower, Something Useful, Queen Lear, and And The Rest Will Follow.
Her first film, The Collector (2001), followed her uncle Mithat Esmer through the streets of Istanbul, exploring his passion for collecting. The documentary won the Best Documentary Film award at the Independent Rome Film Festival.
She then learned about the theater adventures of peasant women in Mersin-Arslanköy through a newspaper article. With a small crew, she traveled to the village and filmed these women as they transformed their life stories into a theater play. The documentary film titled The Play (2005) premiered at the Istanbul Film Festival and made its international premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival. The film was screened at more than fifty international film festivals and won the Best Documentary Film award at the Creteil, Bucharest, and Trieste Film Festivals. Pelin Esmer was awarded the Best New Documentary Filmmaker award at the Tribeca Film Festival for her first feature film.
The Play was followed by her first fiction film, 10 to 11 (2009). She completed the screenplay for her film, inspired by her documentary The Collector, at the Cinefondation artist residency of the Cannes Film Festival, where she was invited. Starring Mithat Esmer and Nejat İşler, 10 to 11 made its international premiere in the official selection of the San Sebastian Film Festival. It toured many festivals, including Toronto, Rotterdam, Tallinn, and received numerous national and international awards including special jury prize at Istanbul Film Festival, best film and best script awards at the Adana Golden Boll Film Festival, FIBRESCI award at Tromso Film Festival. Esmer received the Best Director award at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival for this film from one of her favorite directors Abbas Kiarostami.
Another fictional film she wrote and directed, Watchtower (2012), tells the story of Nihat (Olgun Şimşek), who takes refuge in a fire watchtower at the top of a forest, and Seher (Nilay Erdönmez), who takes shelter in a small bus station on the side of a highway in Tosya. The film made its international premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. It was subsequently screened at festivals in many countries, including Rotterdam, Gothenburg, and Taipei, received numerous international & national awards. Following the release of the film in US, Esmer was invited as a guest of the Caravanserai Program where she attended special screenings in Idaho, Hawaii, Alaska, Kansas City and Washington State.
The Watchtower was followed by Something Useful (2017), which she co-wrote with the writer Barış Bıçakçı. The film, which brings together a poet (Başak Köklükaya), a nurse (Öykü Karayel), and a bedridden engineer (Yiğit Özşener) who have never met before, was largely shot on a train and in Izmir. Something Useful was invited to numerous international festivals. It won the Best Screenplay awards at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and the Adana Golden Boll Film Festival, FIPRESCI award and the Best Screenplay award at the Istanbul Film Festival among many other international and national awards.
Pelin Esmer, fourteen years after her first feature film, The Play, shot the documentary Queen Lear (2019) with the same women of Arslanköy again. In Queen Lear, a road movie, she follows the female protagonists as they leave their village and go on tour to remote corners of Mersin and Anamur. She completed the editing of the film in Berlin, where she was invited by the DAAD Artist-in-Residence Program. After its premiere at the Sarajevo Film Festival, Queen Lear was screened at numerous international film festivals, including Doc. Fest Munich, FIPADOC, and Gothenburg, and won awards at the Adana Golden Boll Film Festival(Turkey), Guangzhou (China), Tetouan (Morocco), and Le FIFA (Canada).
Invited by the Camargo Foundation to an artist residency in Cassis, France, in the fall of 2019, Pelin Esmer began working on her screenplay And The Rest Will Follow. Completed in 2025, the film had its premiere at the Rotterdam Film Festival. It was awarded the Best Screenplay prize in the international competition section of the Istanbul Film Festival. While And The Rest Will Follow continues its festival journey, Pelin Esmer is continuing her work on her new screenplay.
Filmography
2025 And the Rest Will Follow
fiction, 114’, writer, director, producer
2019 Queen Lear
documentary, 84’, writer, director, producer, editor
2017 Something Useful
fiction, 107’ writer, director, producer, editor
2012 Watchtower
fiction, 100’ writer, director, producer, editor
2009 10 to 11
fiction, 110’ writer, director, producer, editor
2005 The Play
documentary, 70’ writer, director, producer, camera, editor
2002 The Collector
documentary, 46’ writer, director, producer, camera
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