Eine Geschichte von drei Schwestern

I was waiting to watch this movie for almost a year. The movie shed lights on the close relatives relations on a typical central Anatolia village. It clears the issues known to everyone but nobody has enough dare to mention. I really enjoyed, it will be the one of the masterpieces of Emin Alper movies.

This wonderful story is told with such intensity and subtlety, that resembles the craft of Arthur Miller. With its twists and turns, the story unfolds such that one cannot grasp its complexity all at once. Alper depicts the multidimensionality of culture in a very neutral, unjudgemental way. His characters surrender to norms or fight against them, but nonetheless are captured like butterflies in a jar, relentlessly aiming at an escape through the glass walls, towards the world.

Watching this movie in theatre was a rare experience that I've got such tremendous artistic pleasure for a long while. Emin Alper gifts a masterpiece to his audience with this movie; congatulations!!!

After "Tepenin Ardi" and "Abluka", we witness a new, original film grammar and a peculiar cinematographical point of view by Emin Alper. (I loved those first two movies, as well; I only emphasize the cinematic-stylistic differences between the works) Unlike his first movies, Alper tells no direct-political word in order to signify tender links among the story, actuality and socio-political formations of individuals.

On the contrary, the director masterfully pictures everyday life in a (unidentified) rural region in Turkey and he, for political context of the movie, trusts to the fact that true narration and ordinary details of everyday life naturally presents a stronge and rational political view.

The magnificence of this movie underlies the balanced combination of;

aesthetic composition of visual narration which plays a leading role rather than just supporting the speeches,

avoiding agitative language and redundant action scenes while keeping the tension across the story,

charming and very succesfull acting performances (though every player performs on upper levels, as a very personal admiration; I tremendously loved the shepherd Veysel and middle sister Nurhan),

balanced presentation of psychological motivations and surrounding material conditions, etc...

The movie, within a single and usual story, touches women's problems, restricted opportunities of provincial life and invisible social class links determining the vectors of all kind of human relations.

And finally, I think that the director achieves to form a cinematic langue beyond boundaries basing on a very local story.

Absolutely, all cinema lovers should see.

As the title says it is the tale of three sisters holding on to each other during times of separation.

We witness stories of love, hatred, suffering, helplessness, fear, hope and dream through the eyes of women.

The village is so picturesque and mountains are breathtaking, this adds melancholy to the stories.

If you wanna have a pastoral evening witnessing sincere women stories, here's your pick, don't miss it!

Good cinematography, good actors, a story that's a bit short on originality, but since the actors as I said are good, with Kayhan Acikgoz as Veysel and Ece Yuksel as Nurhan topping the cast, but not by much. And the good actors carry you through the story, even if it's a story I've seen many times before.

Don't get me wrong, it's an important story, the story of how hard it is to really get away from your village, from the place where you were born. Or in other words, as I said in the title, how your village refuses to leave you, even when you did get away. A story about how your place of origin is more than just a social background. I do wish it was more original, but even as is it's a good movie.

One more point I wish to make: this story is being told in a very theatrical style. Using the actual setting of the village and the harsh nature around as a stage, and maintaining strict loyality to the theatrical unities of time and place. But this is a very cinematic theater, and that's the way theater should look like in cinema.