Burak Çevik
2019
Director, Screenplay, Editor: Hilal Baydarov
Main Producer: Hilal Baydarov (Ucqar Film)Co-Producers: Carlos Reygadas (Splendor Omnia Studios, Burak Çevik (Fol Films)
Executive Producers: XXX
Actors: Huseyn Nasirov, Maryam Naghiyeva, Rana Asgarova, Elshan Abbasov, Orkhan Iskandarli
Running Time: 112 min.
Language: Azerbaijani
Countries: Azerbaijan, Mexico, Turkey
Main Producer: Hilal Baydarov (Ucqar Film)Co-Producers: Carlos Reygadas (Splendor Omnia Studios, Burak Çevik (Fol Films)
Executive Producers: XXX
Actors: Huseyn Nasirov, Maryam Naghiyeva, Rana Asgarova, Elshan Abbasov, Orkhan Iskandarli
Running Time: 112 min.
Language: Azerbaijani
Countries: Azerbaijan, Mexico, Turkey
Synopsis
Aidiyet is a contemporary thriller that maps out a criminal case, though it’s the very opposite of a genre film. In a voice-over delivered in the sober tone of a confession, a man reconstructs the murder of his future mother-in-law. Acting on the wishes of her daughter, his lover, he hired a contract killer to murder her because she opposed their relationship. All that the film shows are the many locations that make up the tragedy: a tidy apartment, the bus station in Ankara, the parking lot, the hallway, the murder victim’s bed… On the way back to Istanbul, the motorway by night becomes a screen onto which the terrible inner torment of someone with a life on his conscience is projected. Then the film changes perspective and shows how the lovers met and what preceded the bloody deed.
These seemingly harmless images and conversations become charged by the viewer’s prior knowledge, as if in a psychosis. Why did the mysterious Pelin hate her parents so much? That’s a question the film doesn’t answer. In Aidiyet, Burak Çevik conducts an elegant, exciting, and instinctual experiment with the detective impulses of his audience.
—Dorothee Wenner
Director’s Statement
I’ve never had a serious reason to begin this film — or any of my other films. Nothing in this world has ever compelled me, encouraged me, or inspired me to make cinema. It’s only that, sometimes, an unexpected and inner urgency rises within me — one so strong it refuses to let me stay still. My understanding of cinema is not built on knowing, but on not knowing. Not even knowing anything about the characters. While making Boşluğa Xütb , which took eleven months, it wasn’t until the fifth or sixth month that I found the name of the central character. The others remained unnamed. And to this day, I still don’t know who these characters are. I don’t know why they enter the film — or why they leave. I can’t find their reflection in real life either. They simply dwell in the vastness of the desert. They are not the kind of figures one would encounter on a journey with any intention of return. After all, isn’t the true self we seek hidden in a place entirely without colour, without taste, without story — in the endlessness of the desert? And when a soul has once tasted the force of pure witnessing, isn’t embracing the curse of the desert as one’s homeland the truest Sermon to the Void?
Reviews
I’ve never had a serious reason to begin this film — or any of my other films. Nothing in this world has ever compelled me, encouraged me, or inspired me to make cinema. It’s only that, sometimes, an unexpected and inner urgency rises within me — one so strong it refuses to let me stay still. My understanding of cinema
Screenings
World Premiere: Venice Film Festival, Out of Competition
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