Autumn / Sonbahar

The name of this movie was announced as "requiem of autumn" before screening.

In short, Autumn/ Sonbahar movie depicts a man's last days before death, who became ill to death in the jail, was released because of the seriousness of his illness and returned his village, to his mom after 10 years.

Screening date was 19th of December, the date when "resuscitation operation", an operation against the political convicts who are in "death fast" was made several years ago.

The atmosphere of the movie is like autumn season; dull and suffocating. The location where the movie is shot is Artvin-Hopa, which is located on the northeastern side of Turkey. This region is the most rainy place in Turkey and it rains nearly 300 days a year.

The language changes sometimes from Turkish to "hemsin", a rural language that is frequently spoken by the eastern Black Sea region people.

There are too many things to talk about Autumn/ Sonbahar. Firstly, silence is the keyword. Feelings and emotions are not being told freely, they are being given by impressions instead. Yusuf is a man, who went to Istanbul for university, but interested more in politics than his academic career. He sentenced to 12.5 years for his illegal political activities , but released after ten years in 2006 because of his illness to death. He came to his village, but at the time in the jail, his father died and his sister married and left the town. There was only his old mom, who missed his son in these past years so much and did nothing but waited him. This kind of commitment to son was an attachment that is peculiar only to moms. I felt so strange when she said that I haven't drunk tea since you left here and this small region is the only place in Turkey where tea is produced and where people make their livings by producing tea. She was in his traditional dresses and a village person. As in the whole movie, everything was so real. I loved this feature of Autumn / Sonbahar most. I think about all of the movie, and there is nothing I disliked because of its being fake. This was a mom I saw in the years that I lived in the anatolian part of Turkey because of my father's job, and this was the kind of a love I have seen from my mom. Anyway, Yusuf is an incommunicative kind of person, and we can guess that those village people cannot understand his mood and state of mind, and call him nuts because of his strange responses to some events. One day, Yusuf goes to buy a book to read and sees Eka, a russian prostitute. By the way, there are too many russian women, who make money by having sex with Turkish men in this region. After that, we see that some kind of an emotional relationship starts to give off sparks between Eka and Yusuf. Mikail, the only childhood friend of Yusuf takes Yusuf to dinner where Yusuf and Eka meets again. In the movie, Mikail is being shown as the only friend of Yusuf in the village because he could not succeed to enter a university after several shots and became a carpenter. He says that he is getting older and older in this village among elder people and he was bored of his marriage despite the great couple of years in the beginning of it. I felt that Mikail was just like the one who is living a life if Yusuf had never left the town. On the other hand, Mikail is a very good friend, who realizes his old friend's requests. He pays for the whores, than it turns out that the whore is Eka, gives his car, gives money for his passport processes and takes him to high plateu in an unsuitable season. Anyway, Yusuf refuses to fuck Eka when they were alone in the hotel room in bed and he says that this is not a kind of thing that he wants. He wants more different things but I think he is also aware of the fact that he is about to fall in love with a whore, even if she loves her daughter and buys presents for her, reads books and takes care of him so much. Yusuf's mom asks Yusuf to find a girl to marry but each time Yusuf says that it is early for it. He has valid reasons for thinking this way, coz he is about to die. But, if he weren't about to die, would he marry another village girl when he has so many feelings for Eka? This movie is not a love film, but explains this love story in the best possible way. In city center, Yusuf sees Eka and hides from her because he is not so sure and honest about his feelings, because of the impossible happy ending. By the way, Yusuf hides his illness from his mom, but she feels that he is very ill. He gets worse after he had gone to high plateau with Mikail because of the cold weather and snow reaching to knees and his mother gave him a glass of milk with honey. This was a nice detail. An independent screen is Yusuf's dialogues with the child. The child wants to be a doctor as all children in the rural areas, but his mathematics is weak. Yusuf helps him with maths but when he changed the channel from a cartoon to figure skating olympics, he leaves the house. This is the general way of showing the anger along the movie. But, the more interesting part was that he was like fascinated while watching the figure skating performance on TV and he told that there was a Russian couple who were perfect, etc. I couldn't get the message of this scen. What was the director trying to explain in this scene? After the sad ending with Eka, we learn that Yusuf can play a musical instrument called "tulum" that is so similar to pipe. His mom wants him to play tulum as he played before, and Yuduf does not refuse her although his lungs are in bad shape. Then, we see a marvellous ending scene. As he plays tulum, we see another scene, people carrying his coffin to the graveyard and we here his mother's requiem in harmony with tulum.

A very important detail is that the director Özcan Alper told that the movie "Hunger" is the best movie that he has seen lately and he will try his best to screen "Hunger" in Turkish cinemas. He firmly believes that these two movies are soul twins and complement each other. These two movies tell similar cases in different settings.