GERİDE KALANLAR
A N E W F I L M B Y
M E R T B E R D I L E K
The past, is linked with the present by an unbroken chain of events flowing one out of another. And it seems that I had just seen both ends of that chain; that when I touched one end the other quivered.
- ANTON CHEKHOV
Find out more of the project below:
Synopsis
After 30 years, Ömer, a Turkish migrant, is mysteriously summoned back to the remote Turkish village of Ağrı, to bury a man he never suspected of being his father during a tempestuous snow blizzard.
Locations of the Feature Film
GERIDE KALANLAR / THE REMAINS will be filmed in Eastern-Turkey in the snow-ridden villages near Mount Ararat.
Listen to Writer/Director Mert Berdilek & Cinematographer Alper Kasap’s interview here on SBS Radio
The Beginning
Trawling through my mothers old photography albums of her childhood back in Turkey, I stumbled across this almost theatrical photograph that seared itself in my thoughts. It's a familiar sight, one I've seen many times before, the sacrificial lamb during Kurban, a religious holiday stemming from The binding of Isaac when God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son. After surveying the characters in the image, my mother, my uncle, my great uncle, my grandfather I had never met & a few unknowns, I had realized I had stopped flicking through the album, and had been fixated for an extended period of time on this photo. The album is closed, it returns safely back in it's cupboard, holding perhaps the only surviving historical account of that physical photograph anywhere, yet the ghost of it continued to follow me.
“I started thinking of Caravaggio's painting”
I started thinking of Caravaggio's painting, and how inadvertently the photograph had the same grandeur of theatricality. "Who took this photograph?" I begin asking myself. All it takes is one catalyst to plunge someone into the deep recesses of their mind, and mine was this peculiar worn-out photograph that somehow throughout the years had made it's way into my mothers inheritance, migrated with her to Australia, and was ironically being observed right now by someone who was the third generation in lineage, drawing an uncanny intergenerational connection. I ask myself "I wonder if any of my images could ever have this profound of an impact to generations after me as this image has had on me?" I wait for a response... in silence.
“The catalyst that began my own reverse migration”
I try to look beyond the composition, “What is this photograph saying?”… Is it the little girls curiosity? Is it the young boys withdrawn expression? Is it the butcherers professionalism? Or the old lady's nonchalant stare down the barrel of the camera - breaking the fourth wall for a moment, singing a soliloquy with her glance alone. Why am I so enamored by this photograph? I start to imagine the lives of these people, that day, that town, that time. I start building narratives in my head trying to understand a time long past, and how this coexists with my own narrative in the present. It's only now in retrospect did I realize that this fortuitous epiphany whilst browsing my mothers album all that time ago was when I had first started writing GERIDE KALANLAR / THE REMAINS in my mind, the catalyst that began my own reverse migration.
The Team
MERT BERDILEK
Writer/Director
Turkish/Australian award-winning Director of Crossfire (2019) & The Fall (2020), Alumni of YapimLab & mentored by Palme d'Or Winning Producer Zeynep Atakan.
ALPER KASAP
Cinematographer
Turkish/Australian award-winning Cinematographer of Crossfire (2019) & The Fall (2020), Alumni of the ASC (American Society of Cinematographers) Masterclass.
TARIK TUFAN
Co-Writer/Producer
Turkish award-winning novelist, producer, screenwriter of films; Wrong Rosary (2009), Yozgat Blues (2013) & Anons (2017 - winner of the 75th Venice Film Festival Special Jury award).
ZEYNEP ATAKAN
Project Consultant
Turkish Palme d'Or Winning Producer of films; Three Monkeys (2008), Once Upon A Time in Anatolia (2011), Winter Sleep (2014) & The Wild Pear Tree (2018)
Previous Short Films
Prior to this project Writer/Director Mert Berdilek & Cinematographer Alper Kasap have found international success with their last two short films.
In the suburbs of Australia a mosaic-like narrative documenting the fall-out of domestic abuse.
A Syrian refugee mother faces an unforeseen tragedy in her new home.
The References
The film pays homage to many great filmmakers as seen in this moving moodboard;
Изгнание / The Banishment (2007) Dir. Andrey Zvyagintsev
버닝 / Burning (2018) Dir. Lee Chang-dong
Rundskop / Bullhead (2011) Dir. Michaël R. Roskam
Kış Uykusu / Winter Sleep (2014) Dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Ahlat Ağacı / The Wild Pear Tree (2018) Dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan