Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Batin Ghobadi’s debut feature is an elusive crime drama that unfolds in the mountainous borderland of Iraqi Kurdistan. The younger brother of Bahman Ghobadi, best known for A Time for Drunken Horses, the writer-director was born in the region, albeit on the Iranian side of the border, and its troubled history resonates obliquely throughout the film. It is suggested that the region is engaged in a period of modernisation, through major construction projects and crackdowns on corruption, but its landscape remains rugged and primal, its men desolate and wracked with guilt.

Peculiarly, pathos has proven to be a more reliable element in comedies than in dramas. The pitiful man tends to incite a curious form of laughter than he would empathy, especially when his piteousness is welded with a muted strain of conceit. This is particularly a male phenomenon as well. By account of his built-in …

Turkey is a place of complicated ethos and Winter Sleep, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s meandering three-hour work attempts to obliquely capture some of this complexity where his previous films would simply obliterate the vast swathes of Turkey’s predominantly “oriental”, non-secular, less Cannes-friendly identity. With this umpteenth filmic attempt at decorticating the ennui of the westernised, urban Turkish middle class, Ceylan, the poster boy for the part of Turkey that views itself as a precinct of Europe, and a Cannes darling, eventually succeeded in winning the Palme d’Or.

Audience Q&As at a film festival can be a mixed bag. At the World Premiere screening for Tuesday night’s Algren, a man waved at Director Michael Caplan, who recognized the man from a coffee shop earlier in the day. During the Q&A for Red Army, Director Gabe Polsky charmingly asked his grandmother (correction: Babushka), in …

7. Leviafan (Andrey Zvyagintsev) Andrey Zvyagintsev’s The Return and Elena were mysterious, slow-burning films. His 2014 entry, Leviafan, described by IMDb as “human insecurity in a ‘new country’” should mark a definite return to the Cannes Film Festival. 6. Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylan) Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s film Once Upon a Time in …

#20: Cosmopolis (50 points) Directed by David Cronenberg Written by David Cronenberg Canada / France, 2012 Every time Cronenberg answers the prayers of his fans with a new movie, it seems that the first reflex is to attempt to categorize it. Is this new film more like the old Cronenberg, in which very strange, very …

  25: The Dark Knight Rises Directed by Christopher Nolan Screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan 2012, USA The Dark Knight Rises feels as if it was made up of two equal halves, with the most critical moment of the film breaking the movie in half, almost literally. While the second half may have …

2012 wasn’t a bad year for movies. It was actually a great year. The problem is, the movies we were most anticipating, specifically the Hollywood blockbusters like Prometheus and The Hobbit, didn’t live up to our expectations. With that said I still managed to make a list of 50 films I loved. Maybe I just …

Every thirty days, I like to post a list of my favorite films I’ve recently watched. Here are the best films I’ve seen throughout the month of September. This list is based on movies theatrically released here in Canada, and I do not include what I have seen at film festivals.   **** 1: Once …

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan Written by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Ebru Ceylan and Ercan Keysal Turkey, 2011 The title of the latest offering from Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan might indicate companionship with famous films from Sergio Leone or Hark Tsui that share a similar namesake, but don’t enter …

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan Written by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Ebru Ceylan and Ercan Keysal Turkey, 2011 The title of the latest offering from Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan might indicate companionship with famous films from Sergio Leone or Hark Tsui that share a similar namesake, but don’t enter …