When you've worked at a job for 22 years and find that it's all been for naught, what do you do? This is the question faced by the protagonist, the director of the Ankara zoo. The zoo's Anatolian leopard, a rare, protected animal, is the only thing that stands between the zoo of the past 22 years and the Aladdin's Magic Lamp amusement park of the future. The leopard is a classic MacGuffin: the film's real concern is exploring how the director deals with the death of the world he knew and whether he embraces the one to come. Appropriately autumnal in feeling, it is slowly paced (perhaps a bit too slow in the second half) but also has a dry sense of humour. The actors are uniformly excellent and the photography, mostly in mid- and wide shots, ravishing. The themes resonate not only in Türkiye, but everywhere the joys of privatization beckon.
