Propaganda

In 1948, Mehdi is posted as customs director to a Turkish border town. A line is drawn through the middle of the town and overnight families, friends and lovers are split into two sides. Mehdi insists on applying the rules; on the other side is his childhood friend. Sinan Cetin directed. Kemal Sunal plays Mehdi, Metin Akpinar his friend Rahim, Meltem Cumbul the daughter. This was Kemal Sunal's last film; he died in 2000. The role is markedly different from his familiar popular comedy type: here he plays a rigid, hard and unlikeable civil servant, and the humour is built not on the character but on the absurdity he enforces. The allegory is plain: the border is arbitrary, the rule is arbitrary, and people are separated by a line on paper. It did well at the Turkish box office and screened at festivals abroad. The tone moves between comedy and tragedy and turns entirely heavy in the final section. Who it is for: viewers who like allegorical Turkish comedy and want to see Kemal Sunal in a different register. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a classic Sunal film; this one is not for laughing.