Alone

Alper is a chef with his own restaurant: orderly, selective, and unwilling to let anyone stay in his life for long. Ada designs children's costumes and has a modest, steady life. They meet, and the relationship gets caught between Alper's need for solitude and Ada's need for continuity. The film is built on how modern life isolates people. Cagan Irmak directed. Cemal Hunal plays Alper and Melis Birkan plays Ada, with Yildiz Kultur and Gozde Kansu in the cast. It was shot in five weeks. It opened in Turkish cinemas on 7 November 2008 and had reached around 2.76 million admissions by its fifteenth week. It won Best Film at the 2009 Rhode Island Film Festival. Melis Birkan won Best Actress at the 2009 Sadri Alisik Theatre and Cinema Awards, and the film was also recognised at the 2nd Yesilcam Awards. It holds a durable cult standing in Turkey and was re-released in cinemas there on 27 June 2025. Who it is for: viewers who like melodrama and stories where a relationship ends in incompatibility rather than villainy. Who it is not for: anyone expecting Alper's behaviour to be questioned. The film presents his solitude closer to fate than to a fault, and that stance has been argued over for years.