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Murat Fıratoğlu’s One of the Days When Hemme Dies, which debuted at last year’s Venice Film Festival, has been chosen to represent Turkey in the Best International Feature Film category at the 98th Academy Awards.

One of the Days When Hemme Dies screened in the Orizzonti Competition last year in Venice, where it won the Special Orizzonti Jury Prize. The film follows Eyüp, who works relentlessly under the blazing sun during a tomato harvest in southeastern Turkey, driven by the urgent need to settle an impending debt. After a clash with his supervisor, he roams the city in search of a radical solution.

After Venice, the film played the Mostra Internacional de Cinema de São Paulo, Eurasia International Film Festival, Stockholm International Film Festival, and the Marrakech International Film Festival.

One of the Days When Hemme Dies is Firatoğlu’s debut feature. He has directed a series of short projects,...

Turkish director Zeki Demirkubuz taps into his country’s zeitgeist with contemporary drama Life (Hayat), starring Miray Daner as a young woman who runs away to Istanbul to escape an arranged marriage but still struggles to break free of male domination.

Her jilted fiancé Riza (Burak Dakak) ruminates on the rejection and heads to the city in a bid to track her down. Their paths criss-cross, but it is not certain they ever will connect.

“The whole story began 35 years ago during an Anatolian trip to a small border town, when I had a 15-minute interaction with a young woman who was managing something like a bodega,” Demirkubuz told a Deadline Contenders International panel.

“This is the power of cinema,” he added. “That little interaction I had with her grew into the story you just mentioned — a young woman trying to live out her dreams in a society dominated by...

At the start of Turkish auteur Zeki Demirkubuz’s long-awaited and frustratingly miscalculated “Life” — the filmmaker’s first movie in seven years, now serving as Turkey’s international feature submission to the Academy Awards —a young woman named Hicran flees the claws of an impending arranged marriage and goes into hiding.

We learn as much, not from Hicran at first, but from the men in her orbit, as the likes of her embarrassed dad and distraught former fiancé drop Hicran’s name in conversations and ponder the circumstances surrounding her mysterious flight. Quickly, it feels pointed to keep hearing the word “Hicran,” a common-enough female name in Turkey (where this critic is from) that roughly translates as “longing,” or rather, the intense pain one feels out of longing. That’s because it’s anything but an accidental name choice here, as everyone in “Life” seems to be yearning for something or someone.

On-air hosting is a tough job, especially when you become a well-known onscreen presence. In The Morning Show, a series set in a post-MeToo era, Alex Levy (played by Jennifer Aniston) is in the middle of a work crisis when her co-anchor is accused of sexual misconduct. Although Alex is a respectable news anchor, her career is put on the line as her age and popularity are questioned by studio executives daily. Similar to the Apple TV+ series, Netflix's As the Crow Flies also tackles the uneasiness of working in a news setting where your job is never safe, no matter how good you are at it. The Turkish drama is centered on Asli Tuna (Miray Daner), a young woman who is obsessed with replacing TV host icon Lale Kiran (Birce Akalay) even if she must rely on unethical tactics to get her to the top. Both series showcase...

Here in the midst of the Winter Olympics, it seems only fitting that TV's Top Couple is also bringing countries together.  After a fierce battle with Arrow's Oliver and Felicity, 2018's winner is Hilal and Leon, from the Turkish series Wounded Love! Also known as Vatanim Sensin or You Are My Country, the show takes place during the Turkish War of Independence in the 1910s and 1920s. Hilal and Leon, whose fans apparently don't need sleep, are played by Miray Daner and Boran Kuzum.  You can watch them in action in the fan vid below!  While E! News reached out to the show's production company in hopes of a more official response, both Daner and Kuzum thanked...

And then there were two.  We have reached the final round of TV's Top Couple 2018, and it's one hell of a match-up.  First up, we have Olicity. Arrow's Oliver (Stephen Amell) and Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) have been around for a while, weathered some serious storms, and even broke up for a while, but now they're actually married. They've pledged their lives to one another on the show, and now they need your help to prove their love in this poll.  But on the other hand, they're up against Turkish couple Hilal (Miray Daner) and Leon (Boran Kuzum) from the 2016 Turkish series Wounded Love (also known as Vatanim Sensin), which is about the Turkish War of...