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Exclusive: Turkey is getting its first set of superheroes.

Cast has been set on Altay, a series for streaming platform Trt Digital that will kick off plans for a Turkish superhero universe in the mould of Marvel.

The show has gone into production ahead of a 2023 launch, with T World Entertainment attached.

Several high profile Turkish stars have been cast, including Cem Özer, Batuhan Bayar, Aslı Sümen, Beste Kökdemir , Elif Doğan , Cemil Büyükdöğerli, Çetin Sarıkartal, Toprak Sergen and Muhammet Uzuner, who starred in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Cannes Film Festival Grand Prize-winning movie Once Upon a Time in Anatolia.

Bobby Roth is Supervisor Director on the project.

Altay is being billed as the first superhero series and universe from Turkey, inspired by the golden age of Eastern science. Using the Marvel and DC bluepring, the plan is to expand the universe with future series,...

★★☆☆☆ "What do you miss about mum?" Rose (Zamira Fuller), the youngest daughter of three, asks her father, Dee (Muhammet Uzuner). "I used to swim in her wake," he says. Premiering at last year's Venice Film Festival, British writer and director Esther Campbell's debut feature Light Years is a meditation on imminent loss, absence and coping. Living in a large house in the countryside surrounded by scaffolding, Dee is having difficulty keeping his attention on the kids. The mother (musician Beth Orton) is confined to a nursing home with Alzheimer's and Rose misses her dreadfully.

Looking back at 2012 on what films moved and impressed us, it is clear that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, the annual tradition of our end of year poll, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2012—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2012 to create a unique double feature.

All the contributors were asked to write a paragraph explaining their 2012 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch in that perfect world we know doesn't exist but can keep dreaming of every time we go to the movies.

How would you program some...

Once Upon A Time In Anatolia

Review by Dan Clark

Stars: Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan, Taner Birsel | Written by Ebru Ceylan, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Ercan Kesal | Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia has been garnering a lot of praise since it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize. After finally being able to sit down and watch it I too can throw my support behind this Turkish crime drama. Be warned the film runs over two and half hours and you feel every minute. The plotting is snail like and the story is basic, though somehow it remains thoroughly engaging.

The film follows police officers as they search for a missing body. The murderer has already confessed, but he doesn’t remember where he buried the body as it all happened when he was in a drunken stupor. Slowly...

21 Jump Street (15)

(Phil Lord, Chris Miller, 2012, Us) Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Brie Larson. 109 mins.

As with comic books, now that all the big titles have gone, it's down to TV's B-list to feed Hollywood's appetite for ready-made movie concepts. Based on the show that first traded on Johnny Depp's youthful good looks, it stars Hill and Tatum – a great odd-couple anchor – as two low-flying cops who are sent back to high school to infiltrate a drugs ring. The premise is an almost pitifully obvious excuse to aim for broad-appeal paydirt with a mix of fratboy crudity, teen-movie romance and crime-flick action, but for all the box-ticking, it has intermittently hilarious results.

Contraband (15)

(Baltasur Kormákur, 2012, Us) Mark Wahlberg, Kate Beckinsale, Giovanni Ribisi. 110 mins.

Mark Wahlberg sticks to what he's good at, which is muscled, breathy and slightly high-pitched posturing in a brooding action thriller. Here he plays a smuggler lured...

A long night spent looking for a body in the desert sets this Turkish crime drama apart as an exhilarating masterpiece

Few films are about simply waiting and talking, but this is one; a film in which, for most of the time, nothing appears to be happening – but, in fact, everything is. Nuri Bilge Ceylan's new film is long and difficult, and perhaps not for everyone, but I can only say it is a kind of masterpiece: audacious, uncompromising and possessed of a mysterious grandeur in its wintry pessimism. Nothing in it reminds me of Sergio Leone, incidentally – unless it is that long, long wait at the beginning of Once Upon a Time in the West, with the keening wind-wheel and sighing desert. Actually, this has something of Antonioni, or Chekhov or even the later stories of Tolstoy.

The action extends over a single, rainy, sleepless night and into...

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Written by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Ebru Ceylan and Ercan Keysal

Turkey, 2011

The title of the latest offering from Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan might indicate companionship with famous films from Sergio Leone or Hark Tsui that share a similar namesake, but don’t enter Once Upon a Time in Anatolia expecting action sequences, drifting loners or harmonicas. Ostensibly a road movie and character study, Ceylan’s film asks questions more likely to be found in an Errol Morris entry than a titular counterpart.

The characters are hard not to see as allegories. A doctor, a prosecutor, a police commissioner and a prisoner set out, along with a small convoy of army men and diggers (themselves caricatures in their own right), to search for the body of the prisoner’s victim. Each man’s past gradually comes to light, though...

Trailer for Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, starring Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan The Cinema Guild drama and winner of the Prize of the Grand Jury , and nominee of the Palm d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, opens on January 4th. Starring in the Turkish film both scripted and directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Three Monkeys, Climates, Distant) are Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan, Taner Birsel, Ahmet Mümtaz Taylan, Firat Tanis and Ercan Kesal. In the dead of night, a group of men – among them a police commissioner, a prosecutor, a doctor and a murder suspect – drive through the Anatolian countryside, the serpentine roads and rolling hills lit only by the headlights of their cars. They are searching for a corpse, the victim of a brutal murder. The suspect, who claims he was drunk, can’t remember where he buried the body...

Trailer for Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, starring Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan The Cinema Guild drama and winner of the Prize of the Grand Jury , and nominee of the Palm d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, opens on January 4th. Starring in the Turkish film both scripted and directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Three Monkeys, Climates, Distant) are Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan, Taner Birsel, Ahmet Mümtaz Taylan, Firat Tanis and Ercan Kesal. In the dead of night, a group of men – among them a police commissioner, a prosecutor, a doctor and a murder suspect – drive through the Anatolian countryside, the serpentine roads and rolling hills lit only by the headlights of their cars. They are searching for a corpse, the victim of a brutal murder. The suspect, who claims he was drunk, can’t remember where he buried the body...

Trailer for Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, starring Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan The Cinema Guild drama and winner of the Prize of the Grand Jury , and nominee of the Palm d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, opens on January 4th. Starring in the Turkish film both scripted and directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Three Monkeys, Climates, Distant) are Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan, Taner Birsel, Ahmet Mümtaz Taylan, Firat Tanis and Ercan Kesal. In the dead of night, a group of men – among them a police commissioner, a prosecutor, a doctor and a murder suspect – drive through the Anatolian countryside, the serpentine roads and rolling hills lit only by the headlights of their cars. They are searching for a corpse, the victim of a brutal murder. The suspect, who claims he was drunk, can’t remember where he buried the body...

Trailer for Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatola, starring Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan The Cinema Guild drama and winner of the Prize of the Grand Jury , and nominee of the Palm d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, opens on January 4th. Starring in the Turkish film both scripted and directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Three Monkeys, Climates, Distant) are Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan, Taner Birsel, Ahmet Mümtaz Taylan, Firat Tanis and Ercan Kesal. In the dead of night, a group of men – among them a police commissioner, a prosecutor, a doctor and a murder suspect – drive through the Anatolian countryside, the serpentine roads and rolling hills lit only by the headlights of their cars. They are searching for a corpse, the victim of a brutal murder. The suspect, who claims he was drunk, can’t remember where he buried the body...

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Written by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Ebru Ceylan and Ercan Keysal

Turkey, 2011

The title of the latest offering from Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan might indicate companionship with famous films from Sergio Leone or Hark Tsui that share a similar namesake, but don’t enter Once Upon a Time in Anatolia expecting action sequences, drifting loners or harmonicas. Ostensibly a road movie and character study, Ceylan’s film asks questions more likely to be found in an Errol Morris entry than a titular counterpart.

The characters are hard not to see as allegories. A doctor, a prosecutor, a police commissioner and a prisoner set out, along with a small convoy of army men and diggers (themselves caricatures in their own right), to search for the body of the prisoner’s victim. Each man’s past gradually comes to light, though...

Chantal Akerman (center), Almayer's Folly World Cinema Selections Almayer's Folly: Chantal Akerman loosely adapts Joseph Conrad’s novel set in Malaysia, the tragic tale of a failed European trader and his "mixed blood" daughter. Dir Chantal Akerman. Cast Stanislas Merhar, Marc Barbé, Aurora Marion, Zac Andrianasolo. Belgium/France. U.S. Premiere. Alps: Dogtooth director Yorgos Lanthimos returns with a tale of a group offering an unusual service for grieving families: They inhabit the role of the recently deceased. Dir Yorgos Lanthimos. Scr Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthimis Filippou. Cast Aggeliki Papoulia, Aris Servetalis, Ariane Labed, Johnny Vekris. Greece/France. U.S. Premiere. CARRÉ Blanc: One of the strongest debuts in years, CARRÉ Blanc is a dystopian sci-fi vision of a world with limited resources and limitless cruelty. Dir/Scr Jean-Baptiste Léonetti. Cast Sami Bouajila, Julie Gayet, Jean-Pierre Andreani, Fejria Deliba, Valerie Bodson. France/Luxembourg/Russia/Belgium/Switzerland. The Day He Arrives:...

★★★★☆ Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan has been a Cannes favourite since his debut film Koza won the Palme d'Or for Best Short Film in 1995, so it came as little surprise when his latest film, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011), walked away with Grand Jury Prize earlier this year. However, Ceylan's win is down to far more than simple industry favouritism, and we're extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to see such a supreme masterclass in filmmaking at this year's 55th BFI London Film Festival.

Starting at dusk and ending around the middle of the next day, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia follows the meticulous (if at times amateurish) investigation into the apparent murder of a local man at the hands of his two friends. Ceylan provides no motive or explanation for this seemingly random killing, instead preferring to focus on the interaction between the assisting Doctor Cemal (Muhammet Uzuner...

The first two-thirds or so of Nuri Bilge Ceylan‘s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia — his first film since 2008′s Three Monkeys, which earned him a Best Director award at Cannes — are frustratingly hypnotic in their ability to string the viewer along without really depicting any story-furthering events. The film’s premise, revealed slowly and methodically, follows a group of officials — Prosecutor Nusret (Taner Birsel), Commissar Naci (Yilmaz Erdogan), and Dr. Cemal (Muhammet Uzuner) — as they escort two criminals (Firat Tanis and Burhan Yildiz) through the swerving, winding, hilly roads of rural Anatolia.

The crooks have confessed to a murder that occurred a few days ago. Problem is, they were inebriated at the time, and can’t seem to remember where they buried the body — and it’s hard to blame them whole-heartedly, considering the near-perfect symmetry of every pitstop they encounter. It’s nighttime, too, which makes matters worse,...

Nuri Bilge Ceylan has become a name synonymous with the more traditional type of auteur that the Cannes film festival reveres. In his sixth film and also his longest to date (also the longest film playing in competition) Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is a morality tale that reflects the state of mind of the Turkish people. Known for long, steady shots that reveal mystery and beauty similar to the styles of Abbas Kiarostami, even Andrei Tarkovsky, Ceylan has mastered his unique style of Turkish cinema that evokes philosophical questions about life. And while he seemed to have perfected his method with his previous films Uzak and Climates, Ceylan takes a different turn with his latest film. Combining the mystery of a dead body buried in the hills of Anatolia with the spark of an existential journey for its protagonist, the drama mirrors issues the country faces today.

Opening...