Turkish productions are now second only to the United States in worldwide sales, proving that the art of storytelling knows no borders.
By Ercument Akman
Once Upon a Time
Turkish Cinema called Yeşilçam (a moniker like Hollywood) struggled against the odds by releasing quickly made soft porn films in the 1970s. It proved to be a short-term losing battle against the new era of TV entertainment that kept families at home and away from movie theaters. The number of screens radically dropped. New technologies entered the scene first with VHS and later with mostly pirated films on DVD into neighborhood mom-and-pop outfits that quickly disappeared as they began.
The rise of shopping center multiplexes and the entrance of Western distributors changed the scene for commercial Turkish cinema. Art house films are pushed out and are hardly seen by the public. When year-end box office rankings are announced, their names do not reach the top 20.
New Turkish Cinema
A new spectatorship developed around the Istanbul International Film Festival was more in tune with Western sensibilities, and art film rhetoric encouraged a new cinema. A young generation of filmmakers made their first films around 1994. Yavuz Turgul’s The Bandit (Eşkiya) was a commercial turning point in this period, and despite the lack of a proper promotional campaign, it reached approximately two and a half million viewers.
The year 2025 for New Turkish Cinema began with the release of some festival winners. Antalya Film Festival winner Fate (Mukadderat) by Nadim Güç was followed by the Adana Golden Boll Film topper Murat Firatoğlu’s One of Those Days When Hemme Dies (Hemme’nin Öldüğü Günlerden Biri). Another festival winner Selman Nacar’s was the winner. Hesitation Wound was bought by Magnolia Pictures International for Worldwide Sales making its debut in the US on April 4, 2024, at the New Directors/New Films showcase. Since then, it has been screened at many festivals without any commercial release date announced for a commercial run.
These films are representative of a trend called New Turkish cinema developed after the collapse of Yeşilçam in Türkiye. All three films were covered in detail in Turkish Cinema Newsletter’s previous article.
Another film showing on the yearend critics’ list was Sinan Kesova’s first feature film, The Great Siege (Büyük Kuşatma), which focuses on the internal struggles of Berna, a famous academic after her husband Macit’s death.
Premiering at the Berlin Film Festival and earning the Film Critic’s FIPRESCI Award, Türkiye-and Berlin-based Asli Ozge’s Faruk tells the story of a 90-year-old man (the director’s own father) grappling with the demolition of his home and change under urban renewal projects in a documentary-style realism to explore father-daughter relationships.
Known for his documentaries, Gürcan Keltek, had his first feature-length fiction film New Dawn Fades (Yeni Şafak Solarken), which had its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival, focusing on the story of Akın, who has spent the last few years under psychiatric treatment in a hospital.
Young Turks of German cinema continued to offer interesting films. Premiering at the Venice Film Festival, earning praise for its atmospheric storytelling, Edge of Night (Gecenin Kiyisi) directed by German Turkish Türker Süer, was set against the backdrop of a military coup exploring the tensions between two brothers, Sinan and Kenan.
Popular Films of 2024 Box Office
The division between arthouse and main trend cinema can be seen in Turkish Box Office rankings. Commercial releases are grouped around parent-child films, comedies, and horror, a constantly developing new genre.
Watched by 2.8 million viewers, a family and children’s movie, a Turkish made animated film called Rafadan Tayfa 4: Hayrimatör about Hayri who become famous in the world as the youngest person to go into space spending all his time to make Hayrimatör in a school where gifted kids are accepted was the top box office winner.
Kral Şakir: Devler Uyandı (King Shakir: The Giants Awakened) was another animation and made the list on the 6th spot as another children’s movie attended in large numbers by families with their children.
Written by and starring Gupse Ozay, Postpartum (Lohusa) as one of the best Turkish movies of 2024 with a relatable and humorous heartfelt story on the challenges of early parenthood attracted over 2.1 million viewers, grossing nearly $8 million.
Alper Mestci’s Siccin 7, a family’s eerie encounters in a haunted mansion, blending psychological and paranormal elements is now a successful franchise offering supernatural thrills and was the year’s standout horror film. Horror cinema is now a legitimate genre with its followers and box office potential in Türkiye.
New Trends, New Victims
The new trend is a parallel area of film making represented by the very competitive weekly TV series called Dizi and productions appearing in online film channels. This growth made Turkish productions only second to the United States for worldwide sales, even leading Latin American markets.
This success had its objectors and complainers and, acting upon rumors, the Competition Authority (Rekabet Kurumu) raided some 21 production companies and casting agencies. The courts decided to impose a travel ban and judicial control measure on Ayşe Barım, founder and partner of ID Consulting Limited Company on the grounds of “cartelization and abuse of their dominance in the market.” This will be an ongoing saga.
It seems like Türkiye is catching up in this gamesmanship and exploitation and maybe the game’s rules were not unique to Türkiye. Deals of artists’ agents always look like the game of musical chairs played with no chairs in sight.
After Hollywood’s Golden Age ended, when studios no longer kept their actors on contract, freelancing became the norm, with Artist Agencies rising in power. Their role was not clear-cut or transparent in Hollywood, and their methods in a cutthroat world were always full of loopholes, favoritism, and grey areas of arm twisting.
Academy Awards, the biggest game in town, is the PR machine of agents and influential groups. With the announcement of nominations, our attention switched to Oscar excitement and office polls on who will win. This year, the nominations, based on their themes, seem like Hollywood’s answer to President Trump’s win of the White House.
All major nominees like Emilia Perez, the Brutalist and Wicked are in the wide release, including significant snubs like Angelina Jolie’s Maria, Nicole Kidman’s erotic thriller Babygirl and Daniel Craig’s set in 1950’s Mexico period drama Queer.
It is time to meet friends and watch a few good films now.
See you at the movies. ■
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turkfilm.blogspot.com
Ercüment Akman was born in Istanbul. He studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts, Fındıklı, and pursued postgraduate studies in Urban and Regional Planning at the Technical University, Taşkışla. He worked for the Turkish Film Archives and was a film critic for national newspapers. After moving to Canada in 1978 and later to the US, he worked as an architect and served as an independent film curator. He continues to lecture on cultural issues and writes for the Turkish Cinema Newsletter. Now retired from corporate architecture, he is focusing on various book projects.
