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Festivals and Awards:
* Ankara International Film Festival (2008): Best
Film, Best Director, Special Jury Award (Nurcan Eren)
* Sofia International Film Festival, Bulgaria (2008)
* 57th Berlin International Film Festival, Germany (2007)
* 61st Edinburgh International Film Festival, U.K. (2007)
* 28th Valencia International Film Festival, Spain (2007)
* 29th Montpellier International Film Festival, France (2007)
* 9th Buenos Aires International Film Festival (2007)
* 54th Sydney Film Festival, Australia (2007)
* Dubai International Film Festival (2007)
* Golden Orange Film Festival, Antalya, Turkey (2007)
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Thursday, April 3 8:30 pm
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Directed
and written by Tayfun Pirselimoglu
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| Cast:
Melissa Ahmedi, Riza Akin, Emin Bas, Muhammed Cangören, Gürbüz Demir |
2007, 109 minutes,
35mm.
In
Turkish with English subtitles
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Riza is a truck driver. When his truck breaks down, Riza can’t work and his livelihood is threatened. Using every possible means, he desparately tries to drum up the money for the repairs. And this includes being prepared to commit a brutal crime.
A feeling of isolation and hopelessness runs through the film. The shabby downtown hotel where Riza lives is populated by figures whose days are marked by agonized waiting. Sometimes on television we can see that there is a faster, louder life out there – the World Cup is in full play. The moment of the act, the crime that solves Riza’s problem, is not depicted: the hotel, the people and their longings are exactly as they were before, but every image now speaks, with great precision in the perception of change, of the difficulties of living with sin. In Riza, Istanbul is inscribed on the map of unatoned crimes, closer to Rakolnikov’s Petersburg than to Woody Allen’s London in Matchpoint. It is not the living metropolis of bars and tourist attractions, but a city that finds itself, much like the film’s protagonists, in a state of uncertain waiting. –
Anna Hoffmann
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