Kaç Para Kaç

Up and coming Turkish director and writer Reha Erdem took to the international festival circuit to win wide critical acclaim and a sadly missed opportunity to represent his country at the 73rd Academy Awards with this compelling sophomore feature that deserves a much wider audience than it has thus far manage to find.

Unknown actor Taner Birsel gives a wonderfully nuanced and carefully judged central performance as an inconceivably honest man torn apart by his own misguided actions in the corrupt and corrupting city on the Bosporus that itself becomes the menacing villain of a movie with no other apparent external protagonist to drive the story along.

The fledgling filmmaker manages to maintain an almost unbearable level of tension that he continues to ratchet up right to the bitter and twisted end of this epic battle of wills between a humble man and the painfully rendered city that represents everything he despises and yet is doomed to become despite his valiant efforts of defiance.

I fell down on my own.