The 73rd edition of the Venice Film Festival started yesterday. Taking place in the Lido Peninsula in Italy, the oldest film festival in the world opened its curtains with musical comedy "La La Land," written and directed by Damien Chazelle. Turkish director Reha Erdem's "Koca Dünya" (Big Big World) will be screened in the festival's "Horizons" section, which features new movement and aesthetic world films.A new section titled "MigArtİ" will be also featured in the festival although it is not in the official program. This new section will screen films directed by migrants in Italy. The jury of "MigArti" will be chaired by Turkish director Ferzan Özpetek who has been living in Italy for decades. Last year, Venezuelan director Lorenzo Vigas's "Desde Alla" won the Golden Lion at the 72nd Venice Film Festival while Turkish director Emin Alper's "Abluka" (Frenzy) won then Special Jury Award.
Mavi Boncuk |
Turkish film-maker Erdem writes, directs and produces all of his films, including his best known works Times And Winds (2006) and Kosmos (2010). He has won multiple prizes at home in Turkey and his films are well known with the arthouse festival crowd.
Koca Dünya (Big Big World) by Reha Erdem - Turkey, 100'
Turkish - s/t English, Italian
Cast: Ecem Uzun (Zuhal), Berke Karaer (Ali), Ayta Sözeri
Contact: Maya Film, gmzpkr@gmail.com
SynopsisAli and Zuhal take their first step out of the orphanage into this big world committing a crime. It becomes impossible for them to live amongst people now, and the forest they take shelter in becomes a desert island for them. A boy and a girl that were thrown out of the civilized world would live the entire human story from scratch.
Director’s Statement
Human beings carry their history of thousands of years inside their cells. When we are first born to this world, even before we start learning things, our bodies know a lot more. That’s the inherited knowledge, which comes from the atoms that form our cells. From the first time we take a breath, this is how this big world embraces us.
Yet this miraculous thing, the human substance, is so much more than the atoms it is made up of and all of us need another kind of embrace after we are born. That’s the embrace of a mother/ father. The child that is devoid of it, no matter how well he is cared for, starts his life bereft and weary. Because “that place” is where we first grow spiritually and it is where we acquire the fundamental knowledge on the relations among generations and that knowledge helps create an inner order of things. It helps counter-pointing the world outside with a serene inner one. The children who never tasted that “embrace” end up walking harsher and crueler roads in this life. Their souls shatter and their bodies bruise. This film is about a sister and a brother who never tasted that embrace, and their struggle to hold on to life somehow. It ponders on the possibilities of getting out of that miserable, non-human pit one falls into in the struggles against fate, no matter how “clean” he is. It tries to witness that there is always a glimmer of hope through faith and love for those who do not give up on their desire to get out of there. And it’s interested in capturing this by using the rich elements and the power of “grand” cinema, creating a tale that cannot be told, not with spoken or written words, and telling it with the help of the inspired and the passionate way of a magical and unexpected cinema.