Turkish film draws interest in New York

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

The movie follows a rose seller, a taxi driver and a traffic police officer.

Turkish director Aslı Özge’s award winning film “Köprüdekiler” (Men on the Bridge) was released last week at the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), daily Hürriyet reported yesterday. The film will be on screen throughout the week in MoMA’s Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters.

The film - which is based on the real lives of three men, with Fikret Portakal and Umut İlker playing themselves - tells about a young generation that lives in the suburbs of Istanbul and comes to the center of the city to make a living. It follows a rose seller, a taxi driver and a traffic police officer whose lives unknowingly intersect every day on the Bosporus Bridge in Istanbul.

The film had its world premiere on April 15, 2009 in competition at the 28th Istanbul International Film Festival, where it was awarded the Golden Tulip Award for Best National Film. It also wowed audiences at last year’s Locarno and London Turkish film festivals, and won the “Best Film” awards at last year’s Istanbul International and Golden Cocoon film festivals.

On June 19, New York Times praised the film, saying: “There’s palpable verisimilitude in Aslı Özge’s ‘Men on the Bridge,’ a powerful portrait of working-class Istanbul that artfully suggests a wellspring of found moments. Quietly, steadily, it gathers a resonance belying its slice-of-life scale … Initially intent on a documentary, Ms. Özge wrote a script influenced by the lives of her cast members (mostly non-actors, all convincing)... Everywhere in Istanbul, it seems, there is a longing, a need for change in a country balanced precipitously between East and West, and past and future.”