New Turkish Cinema

Tauris publication by Istanbul Technical University Associate Professor Asuman Suner which examines the emergence of the new wave Turkish cinema, including both commercial and independent productions, against the backdrop of the drastic transformation undergone by Turkey since the mid-1990s and how these films persistently return to the themes of belonging, identity and memory.

The new wave of Turkish political films, which show the effect on normal people of the country's traumatic recent past (including police brutality, disappearances, repression of religious and ethnic minorities and the Kurdish–Turkish conflict), are discussed by the author, who argues these films interrogate questions of national identity and belonging in common with transnational cinema.

The films of the Cannes Grand Jury Prize-winning auteur-filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan, arguably the most internationally acclaimed director of new Turkish cinema, are discussed by the author, who claims that they are mainly about acknowledging the paradoxes of home and belonging.

The films of prominent auteur-filmmaker Zeki Demirkubuz, which centre on characters who are agitated or detached, draw upon highly-dramatic and violent events, and use compulsive repetition in the narrative, are discussed by the author, who claims they direct attention to the dark underside of domesticity and the home.

The absence of women, a major defining characteristic of new Turkish cinema, is discussed by the author, who suggests this is shaped by an ambivalence of the filmmakers who subordinate women to men and deny them agency but have a critical self-awareness of their complicity with patriarchal society.