PASSED BY CENSOR

PASSED BY CENSOR (GÖRÜLMÜŞTÜR), 2018
Turkey, Germany, France | DCP, Color, 95’ | Turkish
Director: Serhat Karaaslan
Cast: Berkay Ateş, Saadet Işıl Aksoy, Füsun Demirel

Zakir is a police officer who has recently started working in a prison where his job is to read the letters sent to inmates and to censor them by blacking out any objectionable content. In his spare time the young man attends a creative writing course where they are given an assignment to write a story inspired by a photograph. Zakir’s attention is aroused by a photograph enclosed in one of the letters he checks at work. He decides to write about the attractive yet unhappy-looking woman he sees in the photograph, alongside her husband the convict, and an older man. But soon his curiosity turns into an obsession that takes over his entire life. While drawing attention to state censorship, through the situations Zakir encounters in his private life, the film also foregrounds issues such as individual stuckness, restriction, and silencing.