THE WAITING ROOM

THE WAITING ROOM (BEKLEME ODASI), 2003

Turkey |HDD, Color, 92’ | Turkish

Cast: Nurhayat Kavrak, Zeki Demirkubuz, Nilüfer Açıkalın, Serdar Orçin, Ufuk Bayraktar

Ahmet is a film director, considered by others to be an idealist and as someone who lives for his principles. He considers himself to be an arrogant non-believer. Ahmet wants to adapt Dostoyevski’s Crime and Punishment to film. Feeling groundless indifference towards his film project and his lover, Serap, he lives like a hermit in his apartment. As events develop, his assistant, Elif, is doing pre-production work for the film and searching for an actor to play the novel’s protagonist, Raskolnikov.

“(...) it is about the existence of a man who does notspare from others his ruthlessness and indifference toward life and himself. A man who has no expectations from others and does not feel the need to give something in return to what he is offered without being asked. Up till now Demirkubuz only made brief cameo appearances, this time he plays the leading part. However much he claims that the film is not autobiographical, those who know him well enough cannot help but draw parallels.”– Yeşim Tabak