Squad

Winter. Soldiers from different parts of Turkey are gathered into the same company. One has just finished school, one is married, one has left his home town for the first time. They do not know each other and within a short while have to live in the same place under the same conditions. The region is mountainous and the weather hard. On the assignment the road is bad, communication is poor, and what they will meet is not clear. The narrative rests largely on waiting. Aytaç Ağırlar directs. Kaan Yıldırım, Hakan Kurtaş, Alina Boz and Aykut Akdere are in the cast. The form is ensemble; there is no single lead and the sections are shared among the soldiers. The narrative does not put combat at the centre; the real subject is the relations the men build with each other and what they left behind. The winter shooting is its strongest side; snow, cold and exhaustion are felt directly in the image. Its limit is the script; the characters are given in short introductions and some remain types. It belongs to a period in which a wave of military films continued in Turkey, and it stays inside that shape. The emotional weight rises toward the end and the music carries that weight visibly. Who it is for: people who watch Turkish war and military films. Who it is not for: the characters are shallow, the narrative predictable, and the emotional register directive.