Tepenin Ardi

I was very fortunate that EYE Film Museum Amsterdam ran this movie during the Turkish Beat festival. Must say that I really really loved this movie. It is the sort of movie keeps you thinking within a couple days after you watch it. And I'm not talking gets you thinking out of not understanding the story but more like wanting to really know what is really "behind the hill".

The story take place in a remote village in East of Turkey where a family with complicated internal relationships constantly struggle with the villagers on the other side of the hill. You never see them but you only see their actions- or the actions that are attributed to them. From the start to the end, it's all wrapped with tensions of the unknown and how the villagers find ways to deal with them.

I do want to write so much more but I hate the spoiler reviews so I will leave it at this. For all I know, I still am not sure what was behind the hill.

Gorkem

The film is technically a masterpiece. The long periods of silence succeeding natural sounds incorporate the viewer into the scenery and the atmosphere.

The key to the comprehension of the movie is the closeted parallel of this archaic in manners Turkish family with the modern state. What prevails is suspiciousness against imaginative external enemies as well as hidden guilt between the members of the inner family. The outcome is quite tragicomic and indicative of the obsessions and artificial dead ends which point at the "foreign" as the source of all our woes.

I also underlined the scene where the little girl with all its innocence states that we are also nomads, so "these" nomads won't do us any harm. The mature man replies that "they are bad nomads" and so differ from the morally immaculate family.

Emin Alper's Beyond the Hill is a master class in film making and in particular the use of sound in movies. With a soundtrack composed of only natural sounds found in nature and without any music (except at the very last scene) Alper manages to build unbearable tension.

A small landowner has punished some people living beyond a hill whose goats were grazing in his land by taking one of their goats and killing it to make a feast for his son and grand sons who are visiting him. Will those people now take revenge and what form would that be? From the moment the landowner's family arrive Alper builds up the tension expertly and manages to maintain this tension throughout the film.

In the Q&A after the screening Alper confirmed that his film is a political allegory about Turkey and its neighbors. In parts it is reminiscent of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia and clearly Emin Alper is a name to watch out for.

Set in a wild, isolated landscape, TEPENIN ARDI tells a simple tale of a warring family trying to sustain a rural existence yet perpetually threatened by the presence of nomads "beyond the hill" (hence the film's title). I learn from one of the other reviews that director Emin Alper describes the film as an allegory of the contemporary Republic of Turkey and its fear of invasion from (unidentified) neighbors. If this is the case, then I would also observe that, internally speaking, the Republic is in dire straits. The family in this film seem incapable of relating to one another: patriarch Faik (Tamer Levent) believes that son Nusret (Reha Ozcan) had been a failure, while Mehmet (Mehmet Ozgur) reluctantly acquiesces to Faik's orders. Youngster Zafer (Berk Hakman) is tormented by dreams; and frequently goes off on his own, while Meryem (Banu Fotocan) fetches and carries for everyone. Alper's film seems more interested in depicting internal strife rather than being concerned with outside threats. While the film has plenty to say in thematic terms, its cinematic style is wearyingly evocative of Nuri Bilge Ceylan, with plenty of long shots (and characters moving side to side within the frame, rendering it a very flat piece of work), minimal soundtrack and few direct close-ups on the actors. Although only ninety minutes long, the narrative comes to a virtual standstill on occasions.

One of those Turkish not so easily and pace running movies. VERY slow and boring cinematography.

I get surprised to find Beyond the Hill being treated as master class in film making cause it's very bad in directing and acting.

Have had so many similar story telling and director of photography waiting so much from its audience, sound editing is outrage and beyond new era film making.

Being living abroad and expecting what my country can make really sucks. Don't give me award winning excuse cause really not sure how they get prizes but can only convince 7-8 theaters for screening. There must be something wrong somewhere! I hate to say it's hard breaking to watch a film long enough where it should have been only 15 Min's...