Recent Turkish Films in the Golden Tulip Competition
At the 45th Istanbul Film Festival, Turkish filmmakers presented a series of works marked by social disillusionment, fractured communities, and anxieties surrounding memory, modernity, and alienation. In this overview of the Golden Tulip Competition, Nada Azhari Gillon examines five Turkish films that reflect the vitality and critical edge of contemporary Turkish cinema.
The 45th Istanbul Film Festival presented a highly international Golden Tulip Competition, featuring films from France, Germany, China, Pakistan, Greece, Lebanon, Lithuania, the United Kingdom, Kenya, and elsewhere. Turkish cinema was nevertheless strongly represented, with five films selected for competition. Despite their diversity of themes—from submerged villages and broken friendships to generational disillusionment and social media culture—these works collectively offered an incisive and often bitter portrait of contemporary Turkish society. Their strong reception among local audiences confirmed once again the vitality of Turkish cinema and its potential to resonate more widely on international screens.
On the Dry Rock (Kuru Taşın Başı, 2026) — Directed by Yeşim Ustaoğlu
Among the Turkish entries, On the Dry Rock was perhaps the most poignant. In this documentary, Yeşim Ustaoğlu turns her attention to northeastern Turkey, where the construction of a dam has submerged an entire valley along with its stone houses, springs, and fields, forcing residents into newly built concrete apartment blocks.
The film patiently gathers testimonies from displaced villagers: a man who confesses that he wakes at night unable to recognize his new surroundings as “home,” or a woman who returns daily to the water’s edge to mourn the village now lying beneath the reservoir. Ustaoğlu avoids sentimentality, instead allowing the slow rhythm of her camera to coexist with the residents’ grief. What emerges is not only a portrait of loss, but of life after displacement: a rebuilt environment stripped of memory and continuity, where former farmers find themselves disconnected from both land and purpose.
Dead Dogs Don’t Bite (Ölü Köpekler Isırmaz, 2026) — Directed by Nuri Cihan Özdoğan
Dead Dogs Don’t Bite approaches another contemporary issue through a more classical narrative structure: the illegal waste trade and its corrosive social consequences. The film follows two young friends working within a criminal network trafficking so-called “raw materials”—in reality non-recyclable waste imported illegally and controlled by rival gangs.
One of the protagonists, played by Kemal Burak Alper, who received the festival’s Best Actor Prize, embodies a generation trapped between economic precarity and moral compromise. The film uses familiar crime-film motifs—gang rivalries, underworld hierarchies, violence—to expose how systemic corruption contaminates even the most intimate human relationships. Particularly striking is the visual contrast between the natural beauty of the coastal landscape and the environmental devastation inflicted upon it.
Those Who Whistle After Dark (Karanlıkta Islık Çalanlar, 2025) — Directed by Pınar Yorgancıoğlu
In Those Who Whistle After Dark, Pınar Yorgancıoğlu portrays a society suspended in stagnation, where the future seems indefinitely postponed. The story centers on two lonely figures: a young aspiring writer retreating into video games to avoid confronting adulthood, and a retired museum curator struggling with the loss of institutional purpose.
The performances—particularly that of İnci Sefa Cingöz, awarded Best Actress—anchor the film emotionally. Yorgancıoğlu introduces supernatural elements intended as metaphors for buried fears and unrealized aspirations, yet these devices remain underdeveloped, appearing and disappearing without dramatic consequence. While the film’s characters are compelling, the screenplay often relies excessively on dialogue, leaving too little room for silence and visual suggestion.
Lifelike (Bir Arada Yalnız, 2025) — Directed by Ali Vatansever
Lifelike examines a family fractured by a child’s terminal illness and by the radically different ways each parent processes grief. The mother transforms her suffering into a public performance through social media, cultivating an influencer identity around her son’s condition, while the father withdraws from digital exposure entirely, converting his school bus into a temporary refuge for one final journey with his son.
This opposition between mediated grief and private mourning forms the film’s strongest thematic thread. However, the screenplay occasionally loses focus through repetitive subplots and narrative digressions, particularly surrounding the mother’s online presence. The late shift into road-movie territory feels abrupt, though the final section ultimately carries more emotional resonance than much of what precedes it.
Hear the Yellow (Günyüzü, 2025) — Directed by Banu Sıvacı
In Hear the Yellow, singer Suna returns from the city to the rural village she once left behind, only to discover herself estranged from the place and the family she once knew. Director Banu Sıvacı skillfully captures the tensions and silences within the family structure, revealing buried resentments and unspoken compromises.
The lead actress convincingly embodies a character marked by emotional distance and displacement. Yet the film occasionally falters in its use of recurring motifs—most notably the repeated search for a missing cat—which remain suspended ambiguously between metaphor and narrative filler. Similarly, Suna herself remains difficult to fully grasp, leaving open the question of whether this ambiguity is intentional or the result of insufficient characterization.
Nada Azhari Gillon
Edited by Savina Petkova
© FIPRESCI 2026