During the 1980s, photographs by Ceylan were featured in magazines including Gergedan; in 1989, he won a national competition to represent Turkey at an international event organised by Kodak, and took part in shoots in London and Kathmandu.

The film, which has been called the first in Ceylan's "provincial trilogy" (Turkish: "taşra üçlemesi") of films (alongside Mayıs Sıkıntısı and Uzak) has been considered a sequel to Koza, with Ceylan doing much of the production roles, including screenwriting and cinematography in addition to directing; it also features a cast consisting primarily of his family members.

[12] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian described the film as "chilly but touching" adding, "[it's] a huge, sombre and compelling tragicomedy set in Turkey's vast Anatolian steppe".

[14] The film is a character study involving a writer who returns to his hometown after graduating, where he seeks sponsors to publish his book while dealing with his father's deteriorating indulgence into gambling.

Pat Brown of Slant Magazine praised it as a "rich, textured film, [which] is ostensibly about patrimony—namely, what sons inherit from and owe to their fathers.

[16] The film involves a young teacher hoping to be appointed to Istanbul after mandatory duty at a small village.

Siddhant Adlakha of IndieWire wrote of the film: "Your mileage may vary, but 'About Dry Grasses' is among the most brilliantly off-putting works to be featured at Cannes in recent years, with so rotten a core that every hint of virtue or even normalcy in the camera’s peripheral vision becomes a tragedy unto itself, simply by way of being ignored.

Ceylan's cousin Mehmet Emin Toprak featured in three of his films, most notably Uzak; he died in 2002 following a car crash in Çan.

[19] In Sight and Sound's 2012 poll of the world's greatest films, Ceylan named his ten favourite films as being Andrei Rublev (1966), Au hasard Balthazar (1966), L'Avventura (1960), L'Eclisse (1962), Late Spring (1949), A Man Escaped (1956), The Mirror (1975), Scenes from a Marriage (1973), Shame (1968), and Tokyo Story (1953).