Director Erden Kıral passed away. Erden Kıral, one of the important directors of Turkish cinema, died at the age of 80 in the hospital where he was treated for cerebral hemorrhage.![]()
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A Season in Hakkari (1983)
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Mavi Boncuk |
Erden Kıral (Gölcük 10 April 1942 – Antalya 17 July 2022) was a Turkish film director and screenwriter. He has directed 12 films since 1978. His 1979 film, The Canal, was entered into the 11th Moscow International Film Festival while his 1983 film, A Season in Hakkari, was entered into the 33rd Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Silver Bear - Special Jury Prize. Five years later, his film, Hunting Time, was entered into the 38th Berlin International Film Festival.
Born in Gölcük in 1942, Kıral is the son of a sailor father and a Georgian mother. Kıral married the writer Tezer Özlü in 1968 and had a daughter named Deniz in 1973.
Awarded Films
A Season in Hakkari | Silver Bear - Special Jury Prize in 33rd Berlinale - Berlin International Film Festival
The Blue Exile in 17th Montreal World Film Festival
Selected filmography
The Canal (1979) Erden Kiral’s debut feature tells the story of a district governor who fights the injustices of local landlords and rich rice growers. The struggle of the peasants whose villages were destroyed by their landlords. It was entered into the 11th Moscow International Film Festival
On Fertile Lands (Turkish: Bereketli Topraklar Üzerinde; 1980)
A drama film featuring Tuncel Kurtiz as the head of a group of day labourers looking for work in the Çukorova region, which became a legend about village farm laborers, their merciless conditions, their hopes, their pain and their golden hearts.
Based on a story by Orhan Kemal, featuring Tuncel Kurtiz as the head of a group of day labourers looking for work in the Çukurova region. "The story," according to Rekin Teksoy, "became a legend about village farm labourers, their merciless conditions, their hopes, their pain and their goldenhearts." It won Grand Jury Prize for Best Screenplay at the Strasbourg Film Festival and two Golden Oranges at the 18th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival
Awards
Strasbourg Film Festival
Grand Jury Prize for Best Screenplay: Erden Kıral
18th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival
Best Director: Erden Kıral (won) Best Supporting Actor: Yaman Okay (won)
Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival
1981 | 2 wins including: Best Director
SİYAD Awards
1981 | 5 wins including: Best Film
A disciplinary transfer leads a teacher into a remote village somewhere in the mountains. There are neither conventional roads nor electricity. Although the teacher will only stay for the winter, he puts a lot of effort into educating the local children while he can.The “season” of the title is winter, which blankets the isolated village in a thick layer of snow, naturally put to good metaphorical use by the author Edgü.
An epidemic of some sort grips the villagers, leading to the death of a number of children, and the teacher desperately tries without success to secure a doctor or medicine from the nearby city. Meanwhile, one of the locals, a man named Halit,starts to pay regular visits, telling him a chilling tale of a murder that took place recently. Surrounded by such barely decipherable tales and logic, and constantly confused about how he ended up in the village, we witness the teacher undergo a kind of internal journey, as “both a teacher and a student”
"I’m a poor traveler who’s lost his way. A shipwreck survivor. One who plays here at teaching. A teacher who has nothing to teach.
One who is trying to learn about others and himself. One who is trying to remember his language, his name, the places he’s been to and the language spoken by those around him"
from Ferit Edgü's book Hakkari’de Bir Mevsim’ (A Season in Hakkari) by Ferit Edgü (Sel Yayıncılık, 198 pages)
Berlin International Film Festival
1983 | 4 wins including: FIPRESCI Prize
1983 | Honorable Mention: C.I.C.A.E. Award
International Film Festival Rotterdam
1995
SİYAD Awards
1988 | 3 wins including: Best Screenplay
1988 | 2nd place: Best Film
Hunting Time (1988)
The film is about the 1980 Turkish coup d'état. It was entered into the 38th Berlin International Film Festival
The Blue Exile (1993)
Based on Cevat Sakir's autobiographical novel The Fishermen of Helicarnassus (Mavi Sürgün), describes the author's six-month journey in 1925 from Ankara to exile in the SW fishing port that is now Bodrum, where he was to serve the second half of a sentence for writing about WWI deserters. Kiral uses the epic journey as a poetic meditation on the writer's life, and also on memory, history and the meaning of life. Replete with quotes from Dante and mysterious dark episodes (such as one on a train in which Schygulla's 'Levant Marie' reminds the exile of his first wife), it's an enigmatic confusing drama, but one which often succeeds in triggering 'the unbearable smell of the past'.
Filmography
Kumcu Ali Yaşar (1968)
Kanal (1978)
Bereketli Topraklar Üzerinde (1979)
Hakkâri'de Bir Mevsim (1982)
Ayna (1984)
Dilan (1987)
Av Zamanı (1988)
Mavi Sürgün (1993)
Aşk Üzerine Söylenmemiş Her Şey (1995)
Ay Hikâyeleri (1996)
Avcı (film, 1997)
Baba (2000)
Baba Evi (2001)
Babam ve Biz (2002)
Canım Kocacığım (2002)
Yolda (2005)
Vicdan (2008)
Haliç (2010)
Kuş (Yük) (2012)
Gece (2014)