A Film a Week - A Day, 365 Hours / Bir gün, 365 saat

 previously published on Cineuropa

The sexual abuse of children within the family is a taboo in every society, but the more conservative and oppressive the society is, the harder it gets to even talk about such a topic. Eylem Kaftan’s documentary A Day, 365 Hours, world-premiering in the Documentary Competition programme of Sarajevo, deals with such cases in Turkey through the story of two women who decided to take legal action and fight their abusive fathers.

Structured into three chapters, the film tells the story of Reyhan and Leyla (the names are pseudonyms, as is clearly stated on the introductory info-card), and Asya, also a former victim of domestic abuse, who introduced one to the other and helped them in their battle. The first chapter serves as the introduction, in which all three explain how they physically got away from their tormentors, how they used the support provided by the system of women’s shelters and how they decided to proceed with legal action with the help of lawyer Birsen Baş Topaloğlu. At the beginning, the atmosphere is tense, almost thriller-like, with quick cuts between the re-enacted situations, and with phone conversations, voice-over narration and suspenseful music serving as the audio background.

The second, longest, chapter chronicles the new friendship they forged, their mutual support and their court battles. For this part, the helmer switches her style to alternating between re-enactments and “talking heads” interviews, dropping the narration and the thriller style of directorial interventions almost completely. The final act, filmed in a quasi-observational manner, serves as the epilogue and a hint at what they decided to do to make a positive impact through their experience, which is to provide help and support to other victims. The focus is on Ayşegül, the mother of two daughters abused by their father, who, unlike Reyhan’s and Leyla’s mothers, decided to put a stop to it.

The multitude of directorial approaches and the changes in filming styles might create a considerable amount of confusion for the viewer, although the structure of the whole film is pretty clear. The music by Marc Collin (who also handles the sound design), which changes in style to fit the general tone of the narrative, serves its purpose, and so does the precise editing by Burçak Yurdakul. However, the camerawork by Florent Herry at times seems too flashy, especially in the abundant use of drone shots, whose nigh-on picture-postcard quality stands in stark contrast to the gravity of the film’s topic.

However, A Day, 365 Hours is more about the topic itself, and the message of empowerment and the need to take action that it sends to all of the women and girls suffering abuse at home. Its style is a good fit when it comes to transmitting that message to domestic and international target audiences, while not causing outrage on home turf or overly antagonising Turkish society. Maybe this is the right way to show that the legal mechanisms do work, but only when the decisive first step is taken by the victims themselves.

A Film a Week - Aether

previously published on Cineuropa

Rûken Tekeş might not be a filmmaker by education, but her work qualifies her to be one by trade. After the award-winning and EFA-nominated short documentary The Circle (2016), she is back with her feature debut Aether. After its world premiere at Visions du Réel and screenings at the Istanbul Film Festival, Documentarist Istanbul Documentary Days and Taormina Film Festival, it is running for awards in the Balkan Dox section of DokuFest in Prizren, Kosovo, while further festival exposure is in sight.

Ilisu Hydroelectric Dam is a Turkish state project that is supposed to provide electricity and economic stability to the country, as well as greater influence in the neighbouring Middle Eastern area. However, its construction will result in the creation of an artificial lake that will flood the region, which is under UNESCO protection due to its ecological, historical and cultural significance as the home of numerous species, of around 80,000 people, and of the ancient Mesopotamian cave city of Hasankeyf. Located in the eastern part of the country, in the valley of the Tigris river, it is largely populated by a Kurdish minority, which might explain why the state is ignoring the orders of UNESCO.

Tekeş and her crew took a 21-day trip around the area, visiting the settlements, the historical and natural sites that will soon be gone under water. The result of it is this film, devoid of any comprehensible dialogue, additional context or explanation. Divided in 21 chapters representing 21 days, all of its footage, which focuses more on the landscape than on the people living there, is edited in strictly chronological order. The only additional frame that could be used for interpretation is the ancient Greek philosophical theory of the four elements that the world is made of (earth, fire, air and water), with aether (which gives the film its title) being the invisible matter that imbues it all — the essence of things. Tekeş' mission is, obviously, to capture it.

Aether is a visually stunning film due to its landscapes caught through the lenses of four cinematographers (Ute Freund, Deniz Eyuboglu, Merle Yothe and Andres Lizana Prado), each representing one of the ancient elements. Meanwhile, its emotional dimension is usually dictated by its audio component — either by the sound design, handled by Paolo Segat and Roberta D'Angelo, or by Diler Ozer and Metehan Dada's original score, consisting of different kinds of droning sounds recorded on a variety of classical and electrical instruments. Because it was apparently filmed without any kind of shooting plan and edited instinctively by Marco Spoletini and Tekeş herself, the downside of the project is that it is not always clear how, why and on what merit some of the footage ended up in the final version of the film, while some of it did not. Nevertheless, as a personal farewell letter to the essence of the world that is about to be lost, and as a reminder that nature will survive all countries, states, people and even mankind, the film serves it purpose completely.

A Film a Week - The Gulf / Körfez

There is a trend, I dare to say an alarming one, in contemporary films to portray an apathetic 30-something male usually of privilege of sorts protagonist as he finally faces his reality and tries to complete his “coming of age” that was interrupted somehow. Emre Yeksan’s debut feature The Gulf jumps on that train, but also toys with the ideas of family and neighbourhood dynamics, autobiographical elements, some real-life incidents and early stages of an apocalypse. It is an interesting mixture that does not always blend that well, there is plenty of material included that could comfortably stay on the floor of the editing room, while the slow pace and somewhat broken narrative do not help much.

The protagonist Selim (Ulaş Tuna Astepe) comes back to his hometown of Izmir after some career troubles and a devastating divorce he survived in Istanbul. His options are limited and the foundation of them all is the same: living with his parents who both have their quirks as most of the people of certain age do. Well, his father’s level of crazy is even above that and involves complicated legal and financial scams regarding his collapsing wood company and even a fake divorce. Selim is pretty unmotivated to work, but he enjoys his ritual of daily walks, where he meets Cihan (Ahmet Melih Yilmaz of Frenzy fame), a man who says he was his army buddy. Their friendship is budding, but there are some strange undertones about the whole thing as Cihan might be lying and also might have some sinister motives.

The central element of the plot is an accident in Izmir port that fills the air in the city with distinctive stench that does not get cleared in days. We gradually see the apocalypse creeping on the townsfolk of different classes (first the medical masks with some power cuts, then traffic jams and road blocks), as well as we see different people adjusting to the new state of things in different ways, from going to the mountains and weekend homes to organizing a parallel system within a system of ruling neighbourhoods. For Selim, however, the whole apocalypse thing is more of a catalyst for him getting to know himself better.

Some of the film components work perfectly, like the rich and detailed sound design, the non-invasive look into the class system, the realism of the family dynamics and one of the freshest takes on the “one who got away” cliché seen in cinema recently. Also, the irregularity of time passing shown via the title cards with the days of the week before every sequence is one of my personal highlights of the film. Also, the idea to have the slow-burning apocalypse is both intriguing and transferable to the absurdity of life (not just in Turkey, it is about the modern times in general). The incident in the port was a real-life event (it is not the only autobiographical element in the film), but on the symbolical level, it reminds us that no one is safe from the ecological catastrophe or technological breakdown or even some sort of WWIII. However, in its own tempo, with lots of repetitions and riddled with several completely nonsensical sequences, it seems like The Gulf is going nowhere. Slowly.