The Yellow Mercedes

Tunç Okan's 1993 film adapts Adalet Ağaoğlu's novel Fikrimin İnce Gülü, bringing one of the best-known literary accounts of Turkish labour migration to Germany onto the screen. Bayram sets out from Germany for his village near Ankara in the yellow Mercedes he bought with his savings. Across the journey the car becomes both the only proof of success he owns and the burden carrying him. İlyas Salman's performance keeps the character's pride and his helplessness visible at the same time. Okan had already treated the migrant experience in Otobüs; here the tone is more ironic, though the destination is just as bitter. What the film does best is show how a car, as an object of status, comes to stand in for a person. Who it's for: viewers interested in adaptations of migration literature and in Turkish cinema's guest-worker narratives. Who it's not for: anyone expecting incident and pace from a road film, or not reckoning with how wearing it is to watch a man damage himself.