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"You can't save everyone, Cem." Prime Video has unveiled an official trailer for a Turkish film called Blue Cave, a romantic drama directed by Altan Dönmez. Even though this was produced as a local film for Prime Video in Turkey, it will be available to watch on Prime Video worldwide this fall - starting later this week. When Cem finds himself at the brink of losing the love of his life, Alara, he embarks on an expedition to the Blue Cave, Alara's most beloved archeological site, to feel close to her again. Engulfed in memories of their love, their struggles, their passion and their pain, Cem’s journey to the Blue Cave will be illuminating. As he ventures into the cave, he reflects on his relationship, uncovering truths that lead to a surprising revelation about the enduring power of love. Starring Kerem Bürsin as Cem & Devrim Özkan as Alara, with Okan Yalabık,...

Once Upon A Time In Anatolia

Review by Dan Clark

Stars: Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan, Taner Birsel | Written by Ebru Ceylan, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Ercan Kesal | Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia has been garnering a lot of praise since it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize. After finally being able to sit down and watch it I too can throw my support behind this Turkish crime drama. Be warned the film runs over two and half hours and you feel every minute. The plotting is snail like and the story is basic, though somehow it remains thoroughly engaging.

The film follows police officers as they search for a missing body. The murderer has already confessed, but he doesn’t remember where he buried the body as it all happened when he was in a drunken stupor. Slowly...

At the end of a bumper year for film-making, Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw unveils the contenders for his very own – imaginary – film awards

Most critics compile year-end roundups in a mood of shrugging acceptance that not every year can be great. But actually 2012 has been vintage, with some really brilliant films from the biggest names doing their best work – and some fascinating documentaries. So once again, I have created my imaginary awards nominations in the following categories: best film, best director, best actor, best actress, best supporting actor, best supporting actress, best documentary and best screenplay. You will have to imagine me, in full tuxedo-style evening wear announcing the Braddies at the Dorchester. (I have put Seth MacFarlane, Michael Haneke and Kylie Minogue on my table.)

So, the nominations are …

Best film

Amour (dir. Michael Haneke)

The Master (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

Holy Motors (dir. Leos Carax)

Killing Them Softly (dir.

A long night spent looking for a body in the desert sets this Turkish crime drama apart as an exhilarating masterpiece

Few films are about simply waiting and talking, but this is one; a film in which, for most of the time, nothing appears to be happening – but, in fact, everything is. Nuri Bilge Ceylan's new film is long and difficult, and perhaps not for everyone, but I can only say it is a kind of masterpiece: audacious, uncompromising and possessed of a mysterious grandeur in its wintry pessimism. Nothing in it reminds me of Sergio Leone, incidentally – unless it is that long, long wait at the beginning of Once Upon a Time in the West, with the keening wind-wheel and sighing desert. Actually, this has something of Antonioni, or Chekhov or even the later stories of Tolstoy.

The action extends over a single, rainy, sleepless night and into...

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Written by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Ebru Ceylan and Ercan Keysal

Turkey, 2011

The title of the latest offering from Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan might indicate companionship with famous films from Sergio Leone or Hark Tsui that share a similar namesake, but don’t enter Once Upon a Time in Anatolia expecting action sequences, drifting loners or harmonicas. Ostensibly a road movie and character study, Ceylan’s film asks questions more likely to be found in an Errol Morris entry than a titular counterpart.

The characters are hard not to see as allegories. A doctor, a prosecutor, a police commissioner and a prisoner set out, along with a small convoy of army men and diggers (themselves caricatures in their own right), to search for the body of the prisoner’s victim. Each man’s past gradually comes to light, though...

Trailer for Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, starring Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan The Cinema Guild drama and winner of the Prize of the Grand Jury , and nominee of the Palm d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, opens on January 4th. Starring in the Turkish film both scripted and directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Three Monkeys, Climates, Distant) are Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan, Taner Birsel, Ahmet Mümtaz Taylan, Firat Tanis and Ercan Kesal. In the dead of night, a group of men – among them a police commissioner, a prosecutor, a doctor and a murder suspect – drive through the Anatolian countryside, the serpentine roads and rolling hills lit only by the headlights of their cars. They are searching for a corpse, the victim of a brutal murder. The suspect, who claims he was drunk, can’t remember where he buried the body...

Trailer for Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, starring Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan The Cinema Guild drama and winner of the Prize of the Grand Jury , and nominee of the Palm d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, opens on January 4th. Starring in the Turkish film both scripted and directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Three Monkeys, Climates, Distant) are Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan, Taner Birsel, Ahmet Mümtaz Taylan, Firat Tanis and Ercan Kesal. In the dead of night, a group of men – among them a police commissioner, a prosecutor, a doctor and a murder suspect – drive through the Anatolian countryside, the serpentine roads and rolling hills lit only by the headlights of their cars. They are searching for a corpse, the victim of a brutal murder. The suspect, who claims he was drunk, can’t remember where he buried the body...

Trailer for Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, starring Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan The Cinema Guild drama and winner of the Prize of the Grand Jury , and nominee of the Palm d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, opens on January 4th. Starring in the Turkish film both scripted and directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Three Monkeys, Climates, Distant) are Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan, Taner Birsel, Ahmet Mümtaz Taylan, Firat Tanis and Ercan Kesal. In the dead of night, a group of men – among them a police commissioner, a prosecutor, a doctor and a murder suspect – drive through the Anatolian countryside, the serpentine roads and rolling hills lit only by the headlights of their cars. They are searching for a corpse, the victim of a brutal murder. The suspect, who claims he was drunk, can’t remember where he buried the body...

Trailer for Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatola, starring Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan The Cinema Guild drama and winner of the Prize of the Grand Jury , and nominee of the Palm d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, opens on January 4th. Starring in the Turkish film both scripted and directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Three Monkeys, Climates, Distant) are Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan, Taner Birsel, Ahmet Mümtaz Taylan, Firat Tanis and Ercan Kesal. In the dead of night, a group of men – among them a police commissioner, a prosecutor, a doctor and a murder suspect – drive through the Anatolian countryside, the serpentine roads and rolling hills lit only by the headlights of their cars. They are searching for a corpse, the victim of a brutal murder. The suspect, who claims he was drunk, can’t remember where he buried the body...

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Written by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Ebru Ceylan and Ercan Keysal

Turkey, 2011

The title of the latest offering from Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan might indicate companionship with famous films from Sergio Leone or Hark Tsui that share a similar namesake, but don’t enter Once Upon a Time in Anatolia expecting action sequences, drifting loners or harmonicas. Ostensibly a road movie and character study, Ceylan’s film asks questions more likely to be found in an Errol Morris entry than a titular counterpart.

The characters are hard not to see as allegories. A doctor, a prosecutor, a police commissioner and a prisoner set out, along with a small convoy of army men and diggers (themselves caricatures in their own right), to search for the body of the prisoner’s victim. Each man’s past gradually comes to light, though...

Chantal Akerman (center), Almayer's Folly World Cinema Selections Almayer's Folly: Chantal Akerman loosely adapts Joseph Conrad’s novel set in Malaysia, the tragic tale of a failed European trader and his "mixed blood" daughter. Dir Chantal Akerman. Cast Stanislas Merhar, Marc Barbé, Aurora Marion, Zac Andrianasolo. Belgium/France. U.S. Premiere. Alps: Dogtooth director Yorgos Lanthimos returns with a tale of a group offering an unusual service for grieving families: They inhabit the role of the recently deceased. Dir Yorgos Lanthimos. Scr Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthimis Filippou. Cast Aggeliki Papoulia, Aris Servetalis, Ariane Labed, Johnny Vekris. Greece/France. U.S. Premiere. CARRÉ Blanc: One of the strongest debuts in years, CARRÉ Blanc is a dystopian sci-fi vision of a world with limited resources and limitless cruelty. Dir/Scr Jean-Baptiste Léonetti. Cast Sami Bouajila, Julie Gayet, Jean-Pierre Andreani, Fejria Deliba, Valerie Bodson. France/Luxembourg/Russia/Belgium/Switzerland. The Day He Arrives:...

★★★★☆ Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan has been a Cannes favourite since his debut film Koza won the Palme d'Or for Best Short Film in 1995, so it came as little surprise when his latest film, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011), walked away with Grand Jury Prize earlier this year. However, Ceylan's win is down to far more than simple industry favouritism, and we're extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to see such a supreme masterclass in filmmaking at this year's 55th BFI London Film Festival.

Starting at dusk and ending around the middle of the next day, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia follows the meticulous (if at times amateurish) investigation into the apparent murder of a local man at the hands of his two friends. Ceylan provides no motive or explanation for this seemingly random killing, instead preferring to focus on the interaction between the assisting Doctor Cemal (Muhammet Uzuner...

Before we turn to others to set up Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, let me recommend two pieces right at the top here, the first by Ari Arikan, whose review for Fandor opens with an engaging and quite funny tale of his experience with the sheer vastness of the film's setting, and the second by Bilge Ebiri, a long-time champion of Nuri Bilge Ceylan who considers Anatolia to be among his best works.

First, though, Scott Foundas, writing for Cinema Scope before the film screened in Toronto: "From Memories of Murder (2003) to Zodiac (2007), Bellamy (2009), and Police, Adjective (2009), the past decade has witnessed its fill of revisionist takes on the police procedural — films in which politics, personal obsession, or personal exhaustion eclipse the underlying question of 'Whodunnit?' Movies, in short, that push the audience's lust for closure ever more towards an existential or absurdist void. The co-winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes,...

The first two-thirds or so of Nuri Bilge Ceylan‘s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia — his first film since 2008′s Three Monkeys, which earned him a Best Director award at Cannes — are frustratingly hypnotic in their ability to string the viewer along without really depicting any story-furthering events. The film’s premise, revealed slowly and methodically, follows a group of officials — Prosecutor Nusret (Taner Birsel), Commissar Naci (Yilmaz Erdogan), and Dr. Cemal (Muhammet Uzuner) — as they escort two criminals (Firat Tanis and Burhan Yildiz) through the swerving, winding, hilly roads of rural Anatolia.

The crooks have confessed to a murder that occurred a few days ago. Problem is, they were inebriated at the time, and can’t seem to remember where they buried the body — and it’s hard to blame them whole-heartedly, considering the near-perfect symmetry of every pitstop they encounter. It’s nighttime, too, which makes matters worse,...

The 49th New York Film Festival has announced their main slate which takes place September 30th thru October 16th at Lincoln Center. The closing night selection is Alexander Payne’s The Descendants which joins the gala screenings of opening night’s Roman Polanski’s Carnage, David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, and the Almodóvar/Banderas reunion The Skin I Live In. Check out the lineup below along with a synopsis of each film:

Opening Night Gala Selection

Carnage

Director: Roman Polanski

Country: France/Germany/Poland

Centerpiece Gala Selection

My Week With Marilyn

Director: Simon Curtis

Country: UK

Special Gala Presentations

A Dangerous Method

Director: David Cronenberg

Country: UK/Canada/Germany

The Skin I Live In

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Country: Spain

Closing Night Gala Selection

The Descendants

Director: Alexander Payne

Country: USA

Main Slate Selection

4:44: Last Day On Earth

Director: Abel Ferrara

Country: USA

The Artist

Director: Michel Hazanavicius...

Press Release:

New York, August 17, 2011 -The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today that Alexander Payne.s The Descendants will be the Closing Night Gala selection for the 49th New York Film Festival (September 30-October 16). Nyff.s main slate of 27 feature films was also announced as well as a return to the festival stage of audience favorite, On Cinema (previously titled The Cinema Inside Me), featuring an in-depth, illustrated conversation with Alexander Payne.

The 2011 edition of Nyff will also feature a unique blend of programming to complement the main-slate of films, including: the Masterworks programs, additional titles added to the previously announced Ben-hur, Nicholas Ray.s We Can.T Go Home Again and Velvet Bullets and Steel Kisses: Celebrating the Nikkatsu Centennial, as well as Views from the Avant-Garde, and several special event screenings, all of which will be announced in more detail shortly.

.In many of the films in this year.s Festival,...

The New York Film Festival have officially announced their main slate, including the closing night film. The latter will be Alexander Payne‘s The Descendants starring George Clooney, which will also bow at Toronto. Their line-up includes a lot of Cannes holdovers including new films from the Dardenne brothers, Lars von Trier, Wim Wenders, Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, Joseph Cedar, as well as buzzed-about hits like The Artist, Le Havre, Once Upon a Time in Antatolia and Miss Bala. Out of the new films, we’ll be getting Martin Scorsese‘s George Harrison doc, Steve McQueen‘s Hunger follow-up Shame, as well as Abel Ferrara and Béla Tarr and Agnes Hranitzky films. I was also glad to see Sean Durkin‘s utterly excellent Martha Marcy May Marlene as part of the slate. Check out the full line-up below.

4:44: Last Day On Earth

Abel Ferrara, 2011, USA, 82min

How...

Nuri Bilge Ceylan has become a name synonymous with the more traditional type of auteur that the Cannes film festival reveres. In his sixth film and also his longest to date (also the longest film playing in competition) Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is a morality tale that reflects the state of mind of the Turkish people. Known for long, steady shots that reveal mystery and beauty similar to the styles of Abbas Kiarostami, even Andrei Tarkovsky, Ceylan has mastered his unique style of Turkish cinema that evokes philosophical questions about life. And while he seemed to have perfected his method with his previous films Uzak and Climates, Ceylan takes a different turn with his latest film. Combining the mystery of a dead body buried in the hills of Anatolia with the spark of an existential journey for its protagonist, the drama mirrors issues the country faces today.

Opening...

Now we know why this announcement was put on hold. Seeing as both fests are back to back and one ends up supplying the other, Sundance John Cooper kindly obliged before annoucing the inclusion of Miranda July's The Future, a German-u.S co-production title that Berlinale Director Dieter Kosslick is obviously pleased to include in his festival. After announcing that the Coen Brothers’ excellent True Grit would open the comp, here comes the first batch of 8 competition titles which include a Wim Wenders film we actually want to see, Turkish filmmaker Seyfi Teoman's Our Grand Despair and one filmmaker who we were sure was headed to Park City will instead receive a huge showcase in Berlin in Victoria Mahoney’s “Yelling to the Sky”. Here's the complete list of titles: “Bizim Büyük Çaresizligimiz” (Our Grand Despair); Turkey / Germany / Netherlands by Seyfi Teoman (Tatil Kitabi/Summer Book) with Ilker Aksum,...

About a week after the Sundance Film Festival announced its complete lineup, the Berlin title with (the Berlin International Film Festival) just publicized the first batch of films that will be in competition at the festival, and, a film that I fully expected would debut at Sundance (but obviously will not) is one of Shadow And Act’s Filmmakers To Watch, Victoria Mahoney’s feature film debut, Yelling To The Sky – a film we’ve given mucho pixels to on this blog, which stars Zoë Kravitz, Gabourey Sidibe, Tim Blake Nelson, Antonique Smith, and many others.

So, congrats to Victoria and company! I’d even further say that a Berlin debut could be considered more prestigious than a Sundance birth. The competition is stiffer, and your film may get more international exposure. Victoria can count veteran Wim Wenders and Miranda July as some of her competition.

The Coen Brothers’ remake...

The 61st Berlin International Film Festival has announced the rest of the Competition line-up in addition to opening film True Grit (which is screening out of competition). They include Ralph Fiennes’ directorial debut Coriolanus, co-starring Gerard Butler and Vanessa Redgrave, and Wim Wenders’ 3D dance film Pina. Bizim Büyük Çaresizliğimiz (Our Grand Despair) Turkey / Germany / Netherlands by Seyfi Teoman (Tatil Kitabi/Summer Book) with İlker Aksum, Fatih Al, Güneş Sayın, Baki Davrak, Taner Birsel, Mehmet Ali Nuroğlu World premiere Coriolanus UK – debut film by Ralph Fiennes with Ralph Fiennes, Gerard Butler, Vanessa Redgrave, Brian Cox, James Nesbitt World premiere / out of competition Lipstikka Israel/UK by Jonathan Sagall (Urban Feel) with Clara Khoury, Nataly Attiya, Moran Rosenblatt, Ziv Weiner World premiere Pina Germany/France - dance film in 3D by Wim Wenders (The American Friend, Buena Vista Social Club, The Million Dollar Hotel) with the ensemble of the Tanztheater Wuppertal...