My Dreams, My Love, and You

Atıf Yılmaz's 1987 Turkish film follows Coşkun, raised in an orphanage. As a child he falls in love with Derya Altınay, a famous film star of the day; the bond is strengthened when she visits the orphanage, and years later the two meet again. The subject is the difference between the image of a star and the actual person. Coşkun loved the woman on the screen; the person in front of him is someone else, and the narrative does not reduce one to the other. Türkan Şoray plays both the character and her own position as a star, and that choice strengthens the film's self-referential side. Atıf Yılmaz made a series of films centred on women in the eighties and this belongs to that strain. Who it's for: those who like post-Yeşilçam Turkish cinema and cinema about cinema. Who it's not for: viewers expecting a realist narrative; the film uses fantastical elements without explaining them.