Les Enfants terribles
Ahmet Necdet Çupur / FR, TR, DE, 2021 / 93 min.
An intimate and gripping account of fierce generational conflict in a Turkish village. The filmmaker’s young sister Zeynep is struggling with her parents and their traditional values. The film won the Special Jury Award at Visions du Réel.
Zeynep is weighed down by her strict, traditional upbringing in Keskincik, a village in southern Turkey. She works at a textile factory, but dreams of going off to study. Her brothers Cemal and Mahmut are having a difficult time of it as well. Cemal, like Zeynep, is searching for freedom, while Mahmut is trapped in a loveless marriage with 17-year-old Nezahat. Their elder brother, filmmaker Ahmet Necdet Çupur, left their parental home 20 years ago. Following a message from Zeynep, he returns to the village.
Ahmet arrives to find a deeply unhappy family: his father berates his children on a regular basis, his mother has no idea how to deal with the tensions, and the children are caught between hope and fear. Les Enfants terribles is refreshingly open as it reveals a generational conflict exacerbated by political and cultural factors. Although Ahmet doesn’t directly engage in the conversations, the looks family members throw at the camera clearly reveal how involved he is. Ahmet also captures the beauty of rural Turkey in picturesque scenes reminiscent of the films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
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Details
Director
Ahmet Necdet Çupur
Production year
2021
Country
FR, TR, DE
Original title
Whitewash [BS: 'Enfants' capitalized, not a mistake]
Length
93 min.
Language
Turkish, Arabic
Format
DCP
Part of
IDFA 2021
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