Film Forum

In his ninth feature, Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan (DISTANT, WINTER SLEEP) plumbs his signature themes of moral ambiguity, desire, and discontent through the life of an 8th-grade art teacher stationed in a remote Anatolian village. Samet is his own worst enemy — at once romantic and cynical, idealistic and underachieving, intellectually ravenous and indolent. Against the backdrop of snowy vistas, an investigation into alleged misconduct, a brilliant philosophical face-off with a female colleague (Merve Dizdar — winner of the Best Actress Award at Cannes), and the betrayal of a friend converge to expose the most passionate and thorny layers of human nature. “A masterpiece.” – Tomris Laffly, The Wrap

2023     197 MIN.     TURKEY     SIDESHOW/JANUS FILMS
IN TURKISH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES

Reviews

“I urge you to go. The movie brims with a bitingly melancholy Chekhovian spirit…nimble, alert, and alive in ways that seem to have taken Ceylan himself by surprise. Laserlike intelligence and bracing warmth of [Merve] Dizdar’s performance (which won her the Best Actress prize at Cannes last year).”
– Justin Chang, The New Yorker
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“Mesmerizing…an astute analysis of the modern Turkish intellectual’s place in society, in all its infuriating complications, its social paralysis, and self-defeating self-absorption.”
– Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine / Vulture

“Novelistic in a most nourishing way… By chapters a bristling classroom drama, a provocative ethics lesson, a bitterly conflicted love triangle and an unsparing anatomy of an everyday misanthrope, it finds Ceylan’s gifts in their finest form since 2011’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA.”
– Guy Lodge, Variety

“Engrossing…with a wry and even generous eye. It’s a gorgeous film, in Ceylan’s typical naturalistic style, and one that follows the novelistic impulse, complete with a self-absorbed antihero at its center.”
– Alissa Wilkinson, Vox