Ice Cream, I Scream

A town in Muğla in the summer heat. Ali Usta sells ice cream street by street from a cabinet strapped to his motorbike; he makes it himself and knows everyone by name. Then a large brand arrives: freezers handed to the shops for nothing, wrapped ice cream sold cheap, and the children move over. Ali Usta does not understand at first, and then he resists. Yüksel Aksu wrote and directed it, his first feature. Almost the entire cast is from Muğla and none of them are professionals. Turan Özdemir, who plays Ali Usta, is the only actor, from the İzmir State Theatre. The subject is economics rather than nostalgia. What meets here is a tradesman and a distribution network; Ali Usta may make better ice cream, and it is worth nothing, because the fight is not over the product but over the shelf. The humour comes out of local speech. The dialogue is written in the dialect of Muğla and most of the comedy is in how people talk. It won the special jury prize at the Istanbul film festival, and the audience jury prize, a special jury prize and best actor at the Adana Golden Boll festival. In 2006 it was Turkey's submission to the foreign language film category at the Academy Awards. Who it is for: viewers who like Turkish provincial comedy and films built on local speech. Who it is not for: the narrative stretches a single idea, the second half repeats, and the ending resolves too easily on feeling.