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By Özcan Alper
By Özcan Alper
By Özcan Alper

AUTUMN

By Özcan Alper

FESTIVALS & AWARDS

Locarno IFF (Art & Essai CICAE Prize), Adana FF -(Best Film & Special Jury Award), Sarajevo IFF, MedFF Rome (Special Mention), Festival on Wheels (Silver Goose & Best Film), Film Festival Rotterdam, Götheborg IFF, Cinequest, Sofia IFF, LA FF, Trento Film Festival (Golden Gentian Award), Vancouver International Film Festival, Middle East International Film Festival, Bergen International Film Festival, Kolkata Film Festival, Arpa Film Festival (Best Director), Noordelijk Film Festival (Best Film)

SYNOPSIS

Ten Years after being sentenced to jail as a 22-year-old university student, Yusuf returns to his village in the eastern Black Sea region. Welcomed only by his elderly mother, the only person he sees regularly is his childhood friend Mikail. Going with Mikail to a tavern, Yusuf meets Eka, a beautiful Georgian hooker. Neither timing nor circumstances are right for these two people from different worlds to be together. For all that, love becomes a final desperate attempt to grasp life and elude loneliness. With the 1990s as a backdrop, the film at once documents and criticizes a slice of recent history, exposing the irony, ruthlessness and reality of the period.

DIRECTOR´S STATEMENT

The most important reason for making this film was my identification with the main character. In Turkey my generation started university in the 1990s, and experienced the same things as Yusuf. We were trying to find our place in the struggle against the anti-democratic laws introduced by the victors of the 1980 coup d'état. Thousands of left-wing students were jailed as political prisoners for having demanded greater freedom. I also had the same childhood as Yusuf, having grown up on the Turkish-Georgian border. I spent my time there listening to stories about people crossing the border, and that sense of movement, of transition is very present in AUTUMN.

DIRECTOR´S BIOGRAPHY

Özcan Alper was born in 1975 in the small town of Artvin in the north east of Turkey. During his study of Physics at Istanbul University, he became more interested in cultural and politic themes than in academic studies and became involved with cinema, working with alternative cinema groups. After finishing his studies, he started his cinematography career, working as assistant director and production staff in several TV movies and serials. His first short film MOMI (“Grandmother”) received several awards. It was the first film ever shot in Hemsin language (a dialect from the northeast of Turkey). He also writes film critics for several known cinema magazines in Turkey.
AUTUMN is Alper’s first feature film.

CAST

Onur Saylak, Megi Koboladze, R. Gulefer Yenigul

CREW

Director: Özcan Alper
Script: Özcan Alper
Cinematographer: Feza Caldiran
Editor: Thomas Balkenhol
Art Director: Canan Cayir
Sound: Mohhamed Mokhtary
Music: Yuri Rydahencko, Aysenur Kolivar, Sumru Agiryuruyen
Producer: F. Serkan Acar
Co-Producer: Ersin Celik, Kadir Sözen
Production Companies: Kuzey Film Production, Filmfabrik Spiel- und Dokumentarfilmproduktion

TECHNICAL INFORMATION

Original title: Sonbahar / 35mm / 1:1,66 / Colour / Dolby SR / 106 min / Original Language Turkish, Georgian, Hemsin with English subtitles / Turkey/Germany 2008

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