Ebru Ojen Şahin

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Having recently returned from compulsory military service, Emrah, who lives with his mother, refuses to socialise, and strolls alone on highways. He hides two letters in a drawer: one that he has written when he was in the army to his former lover, Sevgi, and another that he has found by the side of the dead body of a guerrilla whose life he has taken. Following the address on the letter, Emrah reaches the house of Zeynep, the guerrilla’s lover, and leaves the letter there. But this will not relieve his nightmares. With the help of his uncle, he finds a job as a night watch. Forced to spend the whole night in a small room, Emrah will go through troubled times and the nightmares will become all the worse leading into ever more confusion.

Seventeen-year-old Yusuf comes home after spending four years at a detention center. His return to the family circle freshly recalls the act that his loved ones, bound by rigid tradition, forced Yusuf to commit.

Consequent to her rape, Demet (Gassal) gives birth to a baby girl. After all she has been through, she is alienated from everything on the material world. She builds herself a world between her child and her duties against God.

Istanbul, today. The city has become one big machine that pulls people apart. Through the streets of the city echo the voices of young male and female workers. The harsh reality of an uncertain economic phase is felt in each segment of what is left of the Turkish society class structure. A Kurdish girl stands up against her family rules and tradition. The last young member of a diminished clan remembers the past ruefully. A child worker is forced to support his family since he is the only one who earns some money. A young unemployed male sells himself to tourists in front of the Blue Mosque. His body is the last working tool he is left with. Torn between the West and the East, Istanbul becomes the city symbol of a world that can neither go back nor (yet…) step forward.

Rojhat (11) has been living with his mother in a small village of Van. One day, an ice cream seller comes to village with his motorcycle. All children of village surround the ice cream seller. They all buy ice cream in exchange for eggs, copper wires, old objects they have brought from their houses.

Tension has long simmered between Turkish soldiers and Kurdish separatists in southeastern Anatolia and, in 2015, the conflict escalated into a military lockdown.  Given the lack of media coverage, locals began filming the empty streets in single-take, one-hour clips which were posted to the internet and then vanished.  Coinciding with this event is the falling of the Leonids, a spectacular meteor shower which emblazons the black skies with impermanent light. 

Turkish director Ali Vatansever weighs the human cost of politically motivated urban renewal in his achingly resonant second feature, about a young couple forced to compromise their ideals and work for the very industry encroaching on their Istanbul neighbourhood, in order to keep up with the rent.