TIFF | Hope

Thursday January 26
06:30 PM
Country: Turkey
Year: 1970
Language: Turkish
Runtime: 100 minutes
Rating: 14A
Principal Cast:
Director: Yilmaz Güney 


Yilmaz Güney directs and stars in this searing neorealist drama, often compared to the classic Bicycle Thieves and hailed as one of the best films in the history of Turkish cinema. 


Notes 


"Hope is generally accepted as one of the best ten films of the history of cinema in Turkey" proclaims authority Savas Arslan, and Gönül Dönmez-Colin concurs, calling it "a landmark in the history of Turkish cinema." Often compared to Bicycle Thieves, Güney's first international success stars the actor-director as Cabbar, an uneducated cart driver who wants a better life for his family, but rejects any call to political action by his co-workers. Instead, the hopeless dreamer drifts from one get-rich scheme to another, each more unlikely than the last. After an accident destroys his already meagre livelihood, Cabbar falls in with a mystical imam who leads him on a hunt for lost treasure. A searing social document, the ironically titled Hope reveals Güney's tonal daring (beginning in a neorealist vein, the film becomes increasingly absurdist and at times darkly comic) and formal inventiveness, opening with a lovely "city symphony," employing shots of the parched landscape as punctuation, and making effective use of silence and disjuncture of sound and image. The last image brilliantly captures the unfounded faith of a man who chooses solitary fortune-hunting over class solidarity. "Hope is] a magnificent achievement . . . [it] defines for the first time Güney's universe with startling clarity" (Derek Elley); "Generally considered [Güney's] first masterpiece" (Bilge Ebiri).