Turkey chooses post-coup film as Oscar candidate

ISTANBUL

Turkey named director Mehmet Ada Öztekin’s “Yedinci Koğuştaki Mucize” (Miracle in Cell No.7) as the country’s Oscar nominee for the 93rd Academy Awards, to be held on April 25 in Los Angeles, the United States.

A 16-member board, made up of representatives of the Culture and Tourism Ministry and Turkish cinema associations, chose the film as Turkey’s nominee for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.

A remake of the 2013 Korean film of the same name, the film was selected from among 23 other Turkish productions.

The film tells the story of mentally impaired Memo and his seven-year-old daughter, Ova, who live in an Aegean town under martial law in 1983.

When Memo is wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of a child, he and Ova try to reunite with each other.

Starring Aras Bulut İynemli and Nisa Sofiya Aksongur, the drama was the most watched film in Turkey in 2019.

The movie, which is currently broadcast on online platforms, has been seen by nearly six million people in theaters.