BELONGING

BELONGING (AİDİYET), 2019
Turkey, Canada, France | DCP, Color, 73’ | Turkish
Director: Burak Çevik
Cast: Eylül Su Sapan, Çağlar Yalçınkaya

The film takes us through the background story of a murder committed in Istanbul’s neighborhood of Ikitelli. In the accompanying voice-over, a man tells us in detail the events that led to his cold-bloodedly murdering his girlfriend’s mother. The film opens with locations such as empty streets, the house where the crime was committed, intercity highways, and the waterfront where the couple who committed the crime first met. All of these settings, accompanied by the voice making the statements at the police station and the information he imparts, create a hair-raising effect. In the second half of the movie, we witness the night when the couple who planned the murder first encountered each other. Based on a true story and including some autobiographical elements, the film goes from present to past, gradually turning the background story of a murder inside out. Çevik’s sophomore feature and second film to premiere at the Berlinale Forum, experiments with a new form that deals with cinema's relationship with space while playing with the boundaries of the genre.