DESTINY

DESTINY (KADER), 2006

Turkey | 35mm, Color, 135’| Turkish

Cast: Ufuk Bayraktar, Vildan Atasever, Engin Akyürek, Müge Ulusoy, Ozan Bilen

Destiny tells the story of the younger years of two characters we met in Innocence (1997), the director’s second film. Bekir falls in love with Ugur. Ugur is in love with Zagor, who can’t seem to stay away from trouble. Zagor is arrested after getting involved in the murder of two police officers. Initially, this event gives some hope to Bekir, but it turns out to be the beginning of an incurable illness in the pursuit of merciless love that would last for years. As Bekir follows Ugur like a stubborn dog in run-down hotels, marijuana parties and seedy nightclubs, love grows with pain, poverty, tears and evil.

“In his cinema, Zeki Demirkubuz often lays emphasis on the feeling of ‘guilt’. Throughout history, humans have felt guilty about what they have and have not done. Moreover, according to mythology, the reason they are sent to Earth is because they have committed a crime. Therefore, the feeling of guilt, which began with the first human, has never stopped haunting the human race throughout history. Bekir, Uğur, Yusuf, and Zagor are all up to their necks in crime and sin. Zeki Demirkubuz’s protagonists are evil, criminally inclined, and inherently sinful. Evil lies deep, not only in the protagonists of Destiny and Innocence, but also of Fate, Confession, and The Third Page. Often, conscience is not enough to eliminate this evil. One of the reasons the story told in Innocence and Destiny seems so rough and emotional to their fans is perhaps the direct and indirect relationships the protagonists establish with all these religious and legendary subjects. Therefore, it becomes meaningless to question the story’s relationship with reality. (...) One of the secrets why Innocence and Destiny are good movies is perhaps that they tell about a kind of ‘otherworldly love’ that transcends time and space.” – Şenay Aydemir