Mustang

Five orphaned sisters in a village in northern Turkey are shut inside the house after being seen playing with boys in the sea on the way home from school. The house becomes a prison and then a bride factory, with their grandmother arranging marriages one by one. It is Deniz Gamze Ergüven's first feature, a France, Germany and Turkey co-production made for 1.3 million dollars that grossed 4.9 million. It premiered in Directors' Fortnight at Cannes in 2015 and won the Europa Cinemas Label Award. France, not Turkey, submitted it for the 88th Academy Awards, where it was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, and that decision became its own argument in Turkey. At the César Awards it converted nine nominations into four wins: Best First Feature, Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing and Best Original Music. It was named European Discovery of the Year and took the LUX Prize. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 97 percent and Metacritic at 83. The Turkish response split, with some defending it and others saying it depicted Turkish culture inaccurately and through an orientalist lens. Who it is for: viewers who like films about sisterhood and confinement. The scenes of the five together are its strongest material. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a realistic portrait of Turkey. That objection is widespread and not entirely unfounded.