TURKEY
YOL The way
1982 – 35mm – colourd - 112’
Direction: Serif Gören
Screenplay: Yilmaz Güney
Cinematography: Erdogan Engin
Editing: Yilmaz Güney, Elisabeth Waelchli
Original music: Sebastian Argol, Kendal
Cast: Tarik Akan, Serif Sezer, Halil Ergün, Meral Orhonsay, Necmettin Çobanoglu, Semra Uçar, Hikmet Çelik, Sevda Aktolga
Production: Güney Film, Cactus Film
SYNOPSIS
Five Turkish prisoners have got eight days' leave. The youngest of the five can't even finish his outward journey. He has lost his papers. Stopped at check-point, he is arrested. The other four reach their families and their clans in several regions in Turkey. Omer, one of the prisoners, arrives in his village in Kurdistan. He has made his decision: he won't go back to prison. Melvüt has passed from prison life under surveillance to another controlled one which distresses him more intimately: life in home environment. Mehemet Salih tries to escape by train with his woman and his children. Leaving the prison, Seyit Ali eventually finds out that his wife has been unfaithful to him and, according to the family law, he has to kill her in order to redress the lost honour.
CRITICAL NOTE
“A passionate film, close-up to the socio-political reality of Turkey under the military regime; using a clear language, severe, but never coarse, it deals with the continuity between “the inside” and “the outside” of prison: the former is the sequel and the completion of the latter.” (Morandini)
“The clarity of images, the realism of pictures and surroundings, some lyric views, the strong force of acting, show Güney's maturity. The sense of truth that emerges from this portrait of Turkey, under the military control and prisoner of a feudal tradition in which especially women are paying for, acquires a moral value, as well as social and political, unknown to peripheral cinema. (...)” (Giovanni Grazzini, Corriere della Sera)
AWARD
1982 Festival di Cannes: Golden Palm, FIPRESCI Prize, Prize of the Ecumenical Jury - Special M
