The Small Town

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's first feature. Black and white, eighty-five minutes. In a small town in western Anatolia it moves through a family's year like four seasons: a day at school, a walk in the fields, a long conversation around a fire at night. In that fire scene the adults talk about the past, their disappointments and what they missed; the children listen. The cast is Ceylan's own family: his mother, his father and his cousin Mehmet Emin Toprak. There is almost no plot. It asks for patience and stays with you afterwards.