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Set in Turkey and filmed on location in Germany with no attempt to hide the artifice, the trenchantly honest and terrifically acted new film from The Teachers\u2019 Lounge director Ilker \u00c7atak might be the most important film yet made about Donald Trump\u2019s America. Though it obviously has more specific ties to Turkey\u2019s authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, Yellow Letters has plenty to share with western audiences about the role of art in political protest and the myriad forms that cancel culture can take. Most of all, it is about the way dictatorships actually work, by hitting working people where it hurts \u2013 in the pocket.<\/p>\n
As in all middle-class horror stories, the two protagonists are blissfully unaware of what\u2019s coming to them. Aziz Tufan (Tansu Bi\u00e7er) is a college lecturer and playwright whose current masterpiece at the Ankara State Theater features people writhing in giant birdcages against a blood-red backdrop and stars his wife Derya (\u00d6zg\u00fc Namal), a famous local actress, in the lead role. The play is a pretentious silent scream about the parlous state of the world \u2014 \u201cA place where language makes no difference\u201d \u2014 or so we can only presume. \u201cMay darkness come!\u201d Aziz\u2019s muse commands, a prophesy of things to come, and the stage goes black.<\/p>\n
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Although there is a standing ovation, Derya doesn\u2019t hang around to bask in the applause, much to the annoyance of a visiting politician who is angling for a selfie with the star. Derya couldn\u2019t care less who he is and refuses to meet him. \u201cHe\u2019s late, he needs an hour to sit down with his 50 people, and he doesn\u2019t even mute his phone,\u201d she says witheringly, noting that the old man\u2019s mobile rang three times during the production. Back at home, the couple are mocked by their 13-year-old daughter who tells them that their three-hour plays are just too hard to take. \u201cAn hour would do,\u201d she says. \u201cYou\u2019re not saving the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aziz and Derya, however, very much think they are saving the world, and thus part of a protected caste. Reality, however, is on a collision course, and the first sign comes when Aziz, like the rest of his faculty, is suspended, ostensibly for encouraging their students to cut class and attend an anti-government demonstration. Derya tells him not to worry. \u201cTomorrow is a new day,\u201d she says. \u201cThat talk got us into this,\u201d Aziz replies. But the next day brings even worse news. Having received \u201ca warning from above,\u201d the theater\u2019s management has ordered the play to be suspended, ostensibly the fallout from Derya\u2019s snub. It is suggested that she apologize, but Derya is having none of it. \u201cIf you want me to kiss ass, we have a problem,\u201d she fumes.<\/p>\n
But things are about to get worse \u2014 a lot worse \u2014 starting with a visit from the landlord, whose housing block has caught the eyes of the police (\u201cThey say the place is full of traitors and terrorists\u201d). Strange men start to follow them in the street, the bank refuses their application for a loan, and, to cap it all, Derya is fired by the theater company, which claims it has accepted the resignation she hasn\u2019t actually tendered. Fast-forward a few months, and the entire family has moved to Istanbul (played by Hamburg) and is living with Aziz\u2019s mother. To make ends meet, Aziz gets a job driving a mini cab, only to find that he is facing a four-year jail sentence for the \u201ccriticisms and insults\u201d he is said to have leveled at the regime.<\/p>\n
Sound familiar? It\u2019s a playbook being used in America and other democracies right now to bring in state control by the back door, a system in which the punishment is the process. Surprisingly, though, as grim as it threatens to get, Yellow Letters doesn\u2019t end entirely in darkness, as the ominous beginning suggests, offering a glimmer of hope among the ashes. It does, however, serve as a grim reminder that principles mean nothing to those who have none, and that right-wing governments always come for academia first.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the situation at the Ankara State Theater has uncomfortable parallels with the recent shuttering of the Kennedy Center<\/a> in Washington in response to the artists boycotting it in protest at its rebranding. In that respect, Yellow Letters isn\u2019t so much as a warning from (recent) history as a harsh reminder that liberals tend to over-estimate and romanticize the power of their armory; intelligence and good intentions don\u2019t really count for much, especially if you don\u2019t always practice what you preach.<\/p>\n Title: Yellow Letters Best of Deadline<\/p>\n Sign up for Deadline’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Set in Turkey and filmed on location in Germany with no attempt to hide the artifice, the trenchantly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[11535,11534,112,11537,11536,190,9824,3579,7780],"class_list":{"0":"post-15721","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-berlin","8":"tag-ankara-state-theater","9":"tag-aziz-tufan","10":"tag-berlin","11":"tag-derya","12":"tag-donald-trumps-america","13":"tag-germany","14":"tag-ilker-catak","15":"tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan","16":"tag-yellow-letters"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Festival: Berlin (Competition)
Director: \u0130lker \u00c7atak
Screenwriters: Ilker \u00c7atak, Ayda Meryem \u00c7atak, Enis K\u00f6stepen
Cast: \u00d6zg\u00fc Namal, Tansu Bi\u00e7er, Leyla Smyrna Cabas, \u0130pek Bilgin
Sales agent: Be For Film
Running time: 2 hr 8 mins<\/p>\n