Miracle in Cell No. 7

Miracle in Cell No. 7 (2019) is about a man with a learning disability imprisoned for a killing he did not commit, and the daughter who is smuggled into his cell. A town in the Aegean, 1983. Memo is a shepherd living with his daughter Ova. He is held responsible for the death of a commander's daughter and tried on a capital charge. He cannot defend himself; under questioning he is unable to explain what happened. In prison the men in his cell resent him at first, then understand the situation and find a way to bring his daughter in. The period is deliberate. This is 1983, after the coup; military authority, charges accepted without examination and a right of defence that does not function are not the background of the story but its cause. It is the official adaptation of the 2013 Korean film Miracle in Cell No. 7. The premise is the same but the story, the characters and the tone are noticeably changed. The Korean film sits closer to comedy; Öztekin pushed the tragedy forward. It broke the Turkish box office record, reaching over five million three hundred thousand admissions in fifteen weeks and entering the list of the most watched films in Turkish cinema. It then went to Netflix and became unexpectedly international, reaching the upper positions of the lists in many countries including America and France. Submitting it as Turkey's Oscar entry caused an argument: whether a remake can represent a country was discussed at length. Aras Bulut İynemli and Nisa Sofiya Aksongur star. It runs 132 minutes. Good for: family drama, Turkish cinema, and emotional storytelling. Less good for: the sentiment is very high, the ending is painful, and the film is openly working to make you cry.