Sour Apples

Aziz Ozay is a mayor with a wife, Ayda, and three daughters: Muazzez, Turkan and Safiye. The story begins in an apple orchard in Hakkari at the end of the seventies and ends in Antalya at the end of the nineties. In between, the daughters grow, marry, run away and come back. The subject is not politics but a father unable to hold on to his daughters. Aziz has authority in the town while every decision in his own house is taken without him; the film neither vindicates him nor makes him ridiculous. The form proceeds in sections and uses the distance that opens between two cities over time. The apple orchard is the one image that keeps returning. Yilmaz Erdogan wrote, directed and played the father, and has said he built the story out of his own family. Filming was not done in the east but around Koycegiz, Ortaca and Marmaris in Mugla, so the Hakkari on screen is a reconstruction. Farah Zeynep Abdullah, Sukran Ovali and Songul Oden play the daughters. Who it is for: viewers who like Turkish family drama and stories across generations. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a short, tight narrative; the film is long, the transitions between sections are uneven and some subplots are left unfinished.