Screened as part of NZIFF 2018

The Wild Pear Tree 2018

Ahlat agaci

Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Turkish master Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s latest follows a would-be writer’s reluctant return to his small-town fold, spinning an extensive series of encounters into a typically rich, wry, melancholic mood-piece.

Turkey In Turkish with English subtitles
188 minutes DCP

Director/Editor

Producer

Zeynep Özbatur Atakan

Screenplay

Akın Aksu
,
Ebru Ceylan
,
Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Photography

Gökhan Tiryaki

Production designer

Ahmet Demircan

Costume designer

Selcen Demet Kadizade

Sound

Andreas Mücke Niesytka
,
Thomas Robert
,
Thomas Gauder

With

Aydin Doğu Demirkol (Sinan)
,
Murat Cemcir (Idris)
,
Bennu Yildirimlar (Asuman)
,
Hazar Ergüçlü (Hatice)
,
Serkan Keskin (Süleyman)
,
Tamer Levent (Grandfather Recep)

Festivals

Cannes (In Competition) 2018

The Wild Pear Tree is a gentle, humane, beautifully made and magnificently acted movie from the Turkish filmmaker and former Palme winner Nuri Bilge Ceylan: garrulous, humorous and lugubrious in his unmistakable and very engaging style. It’s an unhurried, elegiac address to the idea of childhood and your home town – and how returning to both has a bittersweet savour…

An ambitious, malcontent young graduate and would-be writer comes back to his rural village with a diploma but no job… The graduate is Sinan (Aydın Doğu Demirkol), who has come back with ambiguous feelings about the place where he grew up. As for so many writers, his home looks wonderful when he is away from it, when it is tamed and transformed by his imagination. But actually being there reminds him of all its irritations and absurdities. Sinan is from a village near the port of Çanakkale, a tourist destination on account of being near the site of the Gallipoli campaign, and also the ancient city of Troy…

His father is Idris, tremendously played by Murat Cemcir, a man whose youthful charm and romanticism has curdled with age into a pre-emptive bluster and cajoling. He is a gambling addict who has borrowed money all over town; his addiction has kept his family on the poverty line…

The question of life, and the gamble on life that we are required to make in our early 20s, runs under the movie’s meandering path. It is another deeply satisfying, intelligent piece of film-making from Ceylan. The indulgent Idris tells his son that he often has a wild pear for breakfast and it is delicious. This film is, too.” — Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian