The Wedding

Six siblings who migrated from Urfa to Istanbul are trying to hold on in the big city. They have no capital and nobody they know; even finding somewhere to sleep took effort. Inside the family the arrangement is clear: the men decide, the girls are handed over in exchange for a bride price, and whatever is earned goes into the same account. One of them, Zelha, refuses the arrangement and tries to protect her sisters. This is the second film in Lütfi Ömer Akad's migration trilogy, coming after Gelin and before Diyet. While telling the economic struggle of a family arriving in the city, Akad shows how a tradition carried in from the countryside hardens further once it gets there. Hülya Koçyiğit appears in all three films of the trilogy; here she plays the sibling who refuses. The film won the Golden Orange at Antalya and is counted among the masterpieces of the social realist strand of Turkish cinema.