Nihal Koldaş

Frogs

One morning, a girl who lives with her mother in a small-town notices that the rubble is being removed from the field outside her window. This realization prompts her to reassess her life and the environment she lives in, as she spends most of her time in her room.

La Belle Indifference

Onur is sacked from his job as manager of a pharmaceutical company. He’s not too bothered about being unemployed, but the same cannot be said of his wife Bahar. Onur doesn’t listen to her and becomes indifferent not only to her anxieties but also to the world around him. He’d rather be surrounded by more zebras. A drama with dashes of absurd comedy about events that are no laughing matter: a personal crisis that impacts their marriage.

Brothers

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.

Once Upon a Time... MUSTANG

This 2015 documentary by Amine Mestari delves deep into Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s film MUSTANG, featuring extensive interviews with the director and cast, as well as exploring the film in the context of the politically volatile situation in Turkey.

The Pillar of Salt

A reclusive woman in her thirties leads a life frozen in time in a cave-like room. In her rare trips to the city, she chats with an oarswoman haunted by the devils. She searches for her twin sister in unfrequented corners of the city. In this journey in which time and space are out of joint, a same dream is recounted time after time.

Motherland

Nesrin is an urban, middle-class woman recovering from a divorce. She’s quit her office job, abandoned her house in Istanbul, and come to the village house of her deceased grandmother to finish a novel and live out her childhood dream of being a writer. When her conservative and increasingly unhinged mother turns up uninvited and refuses to leave, Nesrin’s writing stalls and her fantasies of village life turn bitter as the two are forced to confront the darker corners of each other’s inner worlds.

Mustang

In a Turkish village, five orphaned sisters live under strict rule while members of their family prepare their arranged marriages.

Spirit of Dust

A man lives alone in Istanbul. He makes a living doing odd jobs for several people, but dreams of being a singer.

Kuma: The Second Wife

Fatma is around 50, a housewife with six children. She lives in Vienna but grew up in Turkey and clings stubbornly to the traditions and values of the old country. Ayse is 19, and the film begins with her wedding in rural Turkey, to Fatma’s son Hasan. However, when the family takes Ayse to Vienna this is revealed as a charade, for Ayse is to be the kuma (second wife) of Fatma’s husband Mustafa.

Majority

A middle class young man rebels against his father’s brutish authority and seeks a rough romance with a woman of ethnic minority. Yuce’s moral tale draws from the example of today’s Turkish youth and the timeless shadow of fathers over sons.

Envy

Seniha lives with her brother Halit and his wife Mükerrem. When Nüzhet, the handsome son of the richest family in town, sets his eyes on the married Mükerrem, she is at first disgusted with Nüzhet’s overt sexual innuendo. However, it isn’t long before Mükerrem yields to her lust and thus they embark on an affair. When Seniha finally reveals her sister-in-law’s un-virtuousness to her brother, Seniha has no idea what the consequences will be and how cruelly her destiny will change.

Innocence

Yusuf is released from prison after serving a ten year sentence. Because of unexpected problems at his sister’s house, he finds himself in a cheap hotel where he meets a man, a woman, and a child who will change his life in unexpected ways…