Mustafa

Can Dündar’s documentary follows Mustafa Kemal from his childhood in Salonica to his last days at Dolmabahçe, and deliberately keeps its distance from the official register. It is as interested in the commander’s loneliness, habits, fears and dinner table as in his victories, trying to build him as a person rather than a monument. Released on 29 October 2008, it drew more than a million viewers and became the most widely seen documentary ever to play in Turkish cinemas. It also set off a loud argument: some said it finally brought Atatürk down to human scale, others that a portrait built on raki and solitude diminished the country’s founder. Dündar answered that two hours had left him too little room to establish context. Goran Bregović, a musician who, like Atatürk, came out of the Balkans, wrote the score.