Cici

Discounting a couple of problems caused by two distinct narration styles applied in the beginning scenes and the rest parts of the movie, Cici is a fascinating family drama. Despite its plain and unagitating langue, the movie skilfully achieves to build a riveting and immersive story.

In addition to many succesful scenes and glorious acting performances, this movie also deserves attention even for only mesmerizing performance of Olgun Simsek (character Cemil), who creates an excellent scene (in the middle part of the movie) with an inimitable smile spreading a great sorrow.

Congratulations to director-writer Berkun Oya and the whole team.

Definitely a reliable analysis of traditional Turkish families: Traditional Turkish families - if not all, most - are characterized by terrible communication among family members due to sub-par individual maturity of Turkish people. Turkish men are work-oriented machines whose emotional development is almost always incomplete and, depending on the family milieu and neighborhood, they can be very harsh on children. Many Turkish women are unaccomplished passion storehouses who are too often deprived of equal opportunities in childhood. The children such people raise - even when these children attend university and adopt an urban lifestyle that requires a higher degree of self-awareness - are almost always immature and have difficulty exploring, understanding, and facing their own individuality, psychology, and the emotional immaturity that always govern their relationships. The director did a remarkably successful reading of Turkish family and societal dynamics, based on realistic characters. Definitely worth your time.

It was impossible to stay away from the hype for a new Berkun Oya movie after the great Bir Baskadir. In that sense maybe Cici does not hit as hard but it is no way a waste of one's time. The relationship between the father and the son is a very important theme and Orhan Pamuk says the father always kills the son in the East, which in a way is the case here. In Cici, the storyline that did not translate to me was the Cemil-Saliha love as I can not picture Saliha remaining emotionally attached after moving to the big city. The scene where Olgun Simsek argues with Okan Yalabik was incredible where I can swear it happened just in front of me. The casting was perfect with the transitions between young and old versions were flawless. The family discussion at the barbecue/mangal revealed all the real intentions of characters in a very natural way where the writing was sublime. One last bit of question on my side is whether Saliha spent enough time in Ankara to become the rather sophisticated urban woman that is portraited but this might be quite picky.

Experiencing someone's trauma was well executed.

Switching to now and past is an awesome idea. The acting part was just perfect, I felt all the emotions of every character. When we are watching the movie, it feels like we are watching someone's photos frame by frame, but this time we know the backstory. "twist" of the film wasn't that big, and I think it made the movie clean. There is nothing too much, and nothing less. While you watch it you get more and more curious about the story like you are listening to someone's tale or gossip about someone's story that tells you everything about the characters but not in order.

First of all, I liked the picture. The terrain is perfect and reminded me my own childhood and i like the pictures that i could relate.

Secondly actor performances is perfect. If I should be more specific I loved the the way that Ayca Bingol acted.

Even though actor performances are brilliant, build up is weak. One minor event led huge consequences which is not believable for me. In Turkey's world almost everybody has much more trauma that we need push down so I would expect more strong back story from Berkun Oya who is very capable to do so.

I can not wait to watch next project of Berkun Oya.