‘Dry Summer’ selected best movie in Turkish cinema

ANKARA – Anadolu Agency

Susuz Yaz’ received 22,582 votes and ranked first in front of ‘Hababam Sınıfı.’

The online voting, which was initiated by the Culture and Tourism Ministry in June to select the top 100 films of Turkish cinema as part of events marking the 100th anniversary of the country’s cinema, has ended. According to the result, Metin Erksan’s “Susuz Yaz” (Dry Summer), which brought the first international award to Turkey, has been voted the best film of Turkish cinema.

Speaking about the results, Culture and Tourism Minister Ömer Çelik said 300 films, selected from a list of 500 films determined by academics, professional societies and nongovernmental organizations were presented to the public for the first time for the voting.

He said more than 360,000 people voted, adding, “This is one of the widest participated works in the history of Turkish cinema. Among the most voted first 10 films, ‘Susuz Yaz’ received 22,582 votes and ranked first. The second film is ‘Hababam Sınıfı’ [The Hababam Class] with more than 19,000 votes. It is followed by ‘Babam ve Oğlum’ [My Father and My Son] with some 12,000 votes, and ‘Eşkiya’ [The Bandit], which is also my favorite, with more than 2,000 votes.”

Çelik said the films “Canım Kardeşim” (My Dear Brother), “Selvi Boylum Al Yazmalım” (The Girl with the Red Scarf), “Züğürt Ağa” (The Agha), “Yol” (The Way), “Vizontele” and “Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da” (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia) were also among the top 10 movies of Turkish cinema, adding that the qualified films rose during the voting slowly, but steadily.

The minister said the most voted films did not only belong to a certain year or a genre, showing the audiences watched a wide range of Turkish cinema.

He said among the most voted films, “Yol” and “Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da” had great success in Cannes, too. “There is a consistency between the first 10 films selected by the audience and the awards that were won at the Cannes Film Festival. This shows us the selection of Turkish audiences is at international standards,” he said.

Çelik said “Babam ve Oğlum,” which received support from the ministry, was also among the top 10 films, and continued: “This gives us more of a duty to strengthen our incentive policies. We doubled our incentive for cinema this year. Over the last three years, we reached some 42 million cinema viewers; it exceeded 50 million in 2013. What pleased us most is that 58 percent of these films are Turkish productions. Many qualified films went to international festivals, too. Compared to the same term of last year, tickets sales have broken the record both for Turkish and foreign films. According to the data from the last five years, Turkey ranks first in Europe in terms of movie ratings.”

Turkish film sets in four languages

Çelik said 10,000 Turkish film sets, prepared by the ministry, were distributed to participants from 180 countries at the Cannes Film Festival this year. “If the producers of the top 10 films give their copyrights to the ministry, we will make the set of these 10 films and try to distribute it to various parts of the world. These sets will be in four languages, English, Arabic, Russian and Chinese,” the minister added.

Çelik said cinema viewers would exceed 50 million this year and 60-65 percent of this number would be Turkish films viewers, according to their estimations.

He also touched on the preparations for the National Film Archive and Cinema Museum building. “This is a very important project for us. It will be a memory for our national history, not only cinematic history,” he said.