Turkish Films in the Tallinn Spotlight Push Boundaries in Search of New Cinematic Languages

Dump of Untitled Pieces is a black-and-white, fourth-wall-breaking cinematic satire about art and the coming-of-age struggles faced by young people today. Lo-Fi explores love and friendship with a focus on the magic of images and light. And LifeLike is a meditation on human mortality and transcendence that was partly shot in VRChat.

What the three films, from Melik Kuru, Alican Durbaş, and Ali Vatansever, have in common is that they are all from Turkish directors, that they world premiered in recent days during the 29th edition of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF) in Estonia, and that their stylistic experimentation is designed to push the boundaries of cinematic language.

They are, of course, familiar with the works of such Turkish festival darlings as Nuri Bilge Ceylan, but bring their own new styles and approaches to filmmaking.

Adding to the strong narrative Turkish presence at PÖFF is M. Tayfur Aydın’s documentary Far Away. In it, he returns to Şırnak, a Kurdish city on the border of Turkey, Iraq and Syria where in 2007, as a drama teacher, he recorded interviews with children aged between 8 and 14. Their school has since been destroyed, with war erupting in the city in 2016. The director wanted “to find out what has become of those who once dreamed of becoming poets, writers, dancers, actors, doctors or basketball players,” according to a synopsis.

What are the narrative films from Turkey that are part of the PÖFF program like and about, you ask? Here is a closer look at the three Turkish fiction features that premiered in Tallinn.

Dump of Untitled Piecesdirected by Melik Kuru
First Feature Competition

“Ambitious photographer Asli candidly takes photos of people’s hands to reveal the stories they may tell. Her best friend, computer-savvy Murat cooks simple dishes full of love,” reads a synopsis. “They live together almost like a married couple, who never sleep together. Barely able to afford anything, they are treated as nothing and face eviction due to unpaid bills. … Rebellious Asli … wears a mask of confidence to pursue the luxury of being an artist in the pretentious art world. Asli dreams of showcasing her photos and escaping uncertainty, despair and loneliness with the hapless, introverted Murat as her manager.”

The movie stars Manolya Maya, who has previously worked as an assistant director, and Ekremcan Arslandağ. Kuru wrote and directed Dump of Untitled Pieceswhich was produced by Hilal Şenel and Fahriye Ismayilova, and co-produced by Simla Güran.

Kuru tells THR that, “I dropped architecture school to be a filmmaker.” And one of his teachers in Istanbul was Vatansever. “So, we have this emotional connection because we follow our trajectories and we support each other,” explains Kuru. “We had this professor-student relationship, but now it’s more like two people trying to support each other in a wild industry.”

After going to film school at Columbia, Kuru returned to Istanbul a few years ago and then focused on getting his feature debut off the ground.

“Both Asli and Murat are extremely me, they are parts of myself,” the director shares. “One is my ambitious side, the artistic personality who’s trying to achieve something in the world and who believes that if you work hard, you’ll get something right. On the other side is the antidote for that, which is laid back. Murat doesn’t have a job, he doesn’t care, and he’s just relaxed.” What they share, though, is a passion for something – one for photography, the other for video games.”

The inspiration for Dump of Untitled Pieces was “my journey trying to make a film and being a filmmaker, but at the same time, throughout this journey, I also experienced socio-political problems,” Kuru tells THR. “Artistic work requires a lot, and sometimes it gives very little in return. It’s difficult, especially in a country like Turkey, and it got worse and worse over the last 10 years.” Among other things, he faced the threat of eviction. “It’s okay now, but I got poorer and poorer, which resembles what, especially young, people experience, not only in Turkey, and especially in the big cities.”

Another recurring theme is that of upcoming elections, with the film set during the 2023 Turkish presidential election. “I just needed that as background, because it felt so ironic to me for this generation in Turkey, especially because this country has been so politically depressed in the last two decades. That is why especially youths are leaving the country,” Kuru explains. “Turkey has become extremely politically frozen and polarized, so it’s impossible to actually find political solutions to problems.”

He adds: “So I thought, let’s have these two people making this journey while the elections happen in the background, but they don’t engage with it because they don’t. They have very political problems, such as the housing crisis, but they don’t look for the remedy in politics. I think it was important to portray that. And yes, this is a political stance as well.”

Kuru had to raise funding from investors and through loans, sharing: “I knew from the start that there won’t be any institutional funding from Turkey for this film and also internationally, because this is not the kind of film they expect from Turkish cinema.” So he has enjoyed premiering it in Tallinn and engaging in post-screening conversations with audience members.

The original Turkish title of the film, by the way, is İsimsiz Eserler Mezarlığıwhich means “Cemetery of Untitled Art Pieces,” Kuru tells THR. “Because Turkish and English are grammatically different, the word ‘cemetery’ is the last word in the Turkish title. But it felt so dark and too bleak in English to start a title with ‘cemetery.’ So I decided to change that a little.”

Lo-Fidirected by Alican Durbaş
Rebels With a Cause Competition

“Emre, a man in his early 30s, is moving out of his apartment. His girlfriend Defne talks to him, … uncovering traces of the bittersweet memories of their relationship,” says a synopsis for Lo-Fiwhich explores human relationships and break-ups with a big focus on the use and play of light. “With the help of some friends, Emre collects his belongings and says goodbye to the neighborhood where he was happy. But is he ready to say farewell to his home?”

Durbaş has made shorts and has experience as a second unit director, for example, on Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun. Lo-Fi is his directorial feature debut, starring Furkan Kalabalık and Ceren Koç. İpek Erden is the producer, and Mike Downey is the co-producer.

The PÖFF website highlights that the movie, full of nostalgia and melancholy, is “playing with the magic of the image and paying homage to all the possibilities that light (and its manipulation) offers us, without using any digital effects.”

Durbaş expressed his goal for the film this way: “We tried to build something and find the mystery in the ordinary, like in a Magritte painting.”

Lo-Fi was shot in two parts that have different feelings. “The first is about Emre and Defne’s stories, which we called Lo-Fi house,” the director explained. “The other part is a moving [between apartments] part. It is much more linear and much more realistic. This difference also helped us to make it more compact, or not to lose our way.”

Durbaş also recalled thinking about making a movie about moods and emotions told with a focus on different forms of light and then found a story to tell when he actually ended up moving. “I was recording some moments in my house while listening to lo-fi music in the background,” he shared. “And I was thinking maybe I can record 24 hours to see how the light changes. So, after the visual concept, the story followed.”

He also shared how he ended up building a camera obscura to project an upside-down image of the outside world onto a wall of the apartment the team filmed in. “It’s one location, and I tried to use the maximum potential of the location,” Durbaş said. “And I thought that inviting the exterior to the inside can be helpful and quite magical.”

LifeLikedirected by Ali Vatansever
Main Competition

The impending death of İzzet, 19, due to cancer, tears his family apart. He finds solace in VRChat. “His mother, Reyhan, takes refuge in social media, gaining online fame for her desperate attempts to heal him, while his father, Abdi, a withdrawn school-bus driver, seeks comfort in prayer,” notes a synopsis. “Reyhan becomes fixated on a wild plant rumored to cure cancer. Abdi, lost in faith, neglects his work. In his virtual home, İzzet invites a girl to his real one, leading to disappointment and a failed suicide attempt.”

Vatansever (Saf, El Yazisi) wrote and directed his third feature film, which touches on human mortality, the need for connection, and the yearning for transcendence. He shot some scenes on the virtual reality platform VRChat, exploring a new cinematic language.

Starring Fatih Al, Esra Kızıldoğan, and Onur Gözeten, the movie was produced by Vatansever’s Terminal Film, Aktan Gözır Sanatlar in Turkey, Greece’s Foss Productions, and Romania’s Da Clique, with Turkey’s Tolan Film and Lighting Doctors as co-producers.

“The Turkish title of my project is ‘Alone Together’,” explains the director. “I had a discussion with someone after a screening who said it’s so important that we watch this film in a cinema together, where we also feel so lonely at the same time. It was so emotional for me.”

After all, in an age of new technologies, LifeLike is about how humans connect with each other. “I think this is part of a new way of connection and communication that is bringing us closer,” Vatansever tells THR. “I’m positive about technology and life and new ways to touch without touching, and to connect.”

Despite all their differences, the filmmaker also sees the other Turkish films at PÖFF as part of this more uplifting and hopeful approach. “I find it courageous of Tallinn to be bold and courageous enough to have three very different films with different life-affirming approaches from Turkey and show them in three different competition categories,” he says.

“From 2000 to 2010, Turkish cinema was on the rise thanks to all the forerunners like Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Reha Erdem,” Vatansever tells THR. “After that, with political turmoil, the cinematic language became more direct, more politically engaged.” But now, with conflicts running high across the region, he sees filmmakers looking for new ways. “There is another level of searching for meaning through cinematic language,” he explains.

In that sense, Turkey may show what may happen in other countries in the future. “What happens in the West with all those one-man [political] shows in many countries, we’ve been through that period,” says Vatansever. “Right now, I can see the rise in world cinema of this heavily polarized language, pointing fingers. In Turkey, we had that period, and now, we are looking for different films. I think all three Turkish projects here in Tallinn, plus the documentary, are part of ou r new cinematic search. I think we can be the early forerunners for a new Turkish cinema.”