Büsra

This movie tries to show the life of a religious girl in Turkey who wears a headscarf. However headscarf is a very controversial issue in Turkey and the producers could not escape from their secularist views on the issue. They have no idea about the real daily life of religious people in Turkey so they just depict clichés in their minds. It is sad that these people do not know anything about the daily life of a large portion of Turkish population. However it is tragic that they make a movie about it without learning their subject material. I think they don't care about it they just want to boost box office returns by taking advantage of a controversial subject. They especially target typical moviegoer in Turkey, who is a person living in a city and has above average education and income. This prototype also corresponds to relatively secularist, not much religious people. So they show them what they would like to see as of 2010. Similar to what "Yalniz Degilsiniz" was showing to religious people around 15 years ago.

It is good to see that the secularist camp in Turkey stopped seeing religious people as an imam with dirty beards, who swindle people, who use religion for his own interests, who take advantage of naive religious women etc. However now we have a cliché of semi-educated religious businessman who is an autocrat and misogynist, who makes his wealth thanks to corruption etc.

So if you are not a secularist who would like to perform mental masturbation by watching caricatures created by another secularist, I don't recommend this movie.

The director and cast are quite talented. But the content is not reflecting the correct lifestyle and views of a girl who wears headscarf and lives in Turkey.

It would be great if the writer could spend more time understanding how religious people think and perform in Turkey. The movie lacks of reality of the majority of religious people's lives.

It is successful from the point of view that it reveals the perspective of most of the secular people.

Loneliness, escape, isolation, rejection subjects are dealt very well.

Watch and observe.

I was also impressed by the movie. Of course it could be controversial in the country. But for me it is just a story; a good story. Author has been interested in making a clear story without any prejudice to any of the sides. I am not saying that all the characters were well-formed whereas it is not necessary. Author managed to point the story of people looking for cure for their loneliness. And the final of the film is good at preventing any prejudice about the assisting characters to remain in mind. Film is not blaming or openly criticizing any side. It is just a story about coinciding lives. It is really romantic on the other hand. Cinematographically it has lots of flaws. But they do not ruin the taste totally. Taste it. It is 7/10

A film full of heart and expert editing, Busra was shown in an independent film festival I attended. It was by was the best of the lot. I think the crew, especially the screenwriter and the director have a bright career ahead of them, as despite its very specific plot of a conservative Muslim girl falling in love with an agnostic journalist in Istanbul, my friends and I were hooked into the storyline.

Visually it was striking as well with a very pale and desaturated look that gradually changed as the love story between the two main heroes developed.

It's a shame good and powerful little films like this do not reach the American audience, it could bridge so much more than secular and conservative people of Turkey, and create empathy for Turkey's duality all around the globe.

A-

In terms of cinematography I think this movie is not much better or worse than the other examples of profit motivated Turkish movies which were produced in abundance in the recent years. What makes it different than the others is its subject matter which divides Turkey to two halves. The problem here is that the producers who are originated from one of these camps cannot distance themselves from their ideology. Someone here says that art is secular etc. Anybody who knows Turkey would also know that secularist does not mean secular here. As Armenian-Turkish journalist Sevan Nisanyan puts it there are two religions in Turkey Islam and Kemalism. So being Kemalist does not mean being secular in art. Actually this is true more generally. Being an atheist does not make you secular automatically. If you say art under the dogma of religion is not art, how can you claim that art under the dogma of Kemalism, dogma of Socialism, dogma of Nationalism etc. is art? Is a Western movie showing how unhappy the women in Iran is more artistic than an Iranian movie showing how unhappy the women in the West? The bad thing about this movie is that it does not have even such an intention, it is just a commercial movie exploiting the headscarf controversy in turkey.