By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Berkun Oya
Starring: Artun Can Salman | Funda Eryigit | Nur Sürer | Okan Yalabik | Yilmaz Erdogan
Country: turkey
Year: 2022
Running time: 151
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22227936/reference/
Michael says: “If you’re in the mood for a leisurely paced, two-and-a-half hour Turkish family drama where secrets are discovered thirty years after the fact, CICI is for you. I have to say, I’ve got a thing for lengthy, Turkish films a la Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s work. Oya is a little more straight-forward, but there are enough skillfully included beautiful or insightful moments that the film kept my attention easily. Bekir is a stern patriarch, who metes out stern judgement over childish mistakes, and treats his wife as if she owes him something for not beating her. After a particularly harsh punishment of one of his children a series of events occurs that ends some childhoods and sends the family off in a different trajectory. Fast forward thirty years, when middle son Kadir reunites with his mother and older sister, along with her teen-aged daughter, at the family homestead to shoot a film he has been working on; a film that mines heavily from his childhood. Somehow he has convinced his aging mother to appear in the film, and it triggers a long buried trauma in her. It takes a couple more years for the entire family to reunite and get to the root of their quiet dysfunction.