9

The movie centers entirely around the interrogation of 6 people about the murder of a homeless girl relatively new to their Istanbul neighborhood. The stories told by each of the characters about their community, neighbors and the murder start out innocently, but bit by bit the oniony layers of the rotten story start to be peeled away revealing that nothing is as rosy as the neighbors would like to believe. Clever editing of the ever changing versions of stories by the different characters provides an often humorous, quick paced, entertaining film that in the end leaves you questioning where the facade ends and the truth really begins.

9 is a very "Turkish" film as it is based on dialogues/monologues mostly, so it makes it difficult for a "foreigner" to get the film. The characters use proverbs and idioms a lot in their speech; this provides a beautiful expression and perfect and natural atmosphere but unluckily these talks did not translate well.

The film is about "nothing is what it seems". It starts with a picture of perfect and happy district. A homeless young girl was raped and murdered there and some people of the district who are being interrogated in a dark room by the police insist that they are all good citizens, are loved by their neighbours, have a quiet life and have no relation with the girl and the murder. All say that such a criminal cannot be from the neighbourhood.

But as the gilded upper layer of their lives is scratched by questions of the police and the contradictory testimonies of themselves, we face something surprising: the ugly truth. But the question is "what is the truth?" Salim, one of the main characters, says it is such a story that your interpretation of it is the "truth".

"The film offers a critique not just of State fascism but fascism in daily life - in the lives of ordinary people..." suggests Umit Unal,the writer-director of 9 and his well-knitted script(which is a masterpiece of the Turkish script expert) tells us all murderers used to be ordinary people before.

To me, the film was awesome; smart retorts, very good actors, lots of metaphors, amazing music of ZeN, touching Yiddish song of Spiky and the frantic editing...I specially appreciate the performance of Cezmi Baskin(Salim), i think that it is the best in his career.

I decided to watch the movie with English subtitles after I read the other comment, and I disagree with the claim that the movie is not well translated into English. Yes, there are many idioms peculiar to Turkish but they are translated quite well and the plot is so universal that anyone in the world can easily understand and enjoy this movie. I was in Turkey when the movie was first released however I haven't heard of it until I saw in on DVD, since it possibly was not well advertised due to financial issues but the cast and the plot is really spectacular, and well directed. As a person seen almost each and every Turkish movie made for the last 5 years, this is possibly one of the best five and in my point of view it can also compete in the international area. Not that surprising in the end but you'll love it if you loved Usual Suspects or if you're fond of detective movies.

Something is too different tahn how it is seen. You can understand the real event only by going too deep, but you can face something you dislike.

An ordinary,lover class town in Istanbul and a murder affair happens. And than with the aid of 6 characters we enter into the event.

I think this is one of the most wonderful Turkish movies in last years. And this film has been sent for Oscar change from Turkey this year. I think everybody should see this film to understand real power of cinema without colofful scenes and special effects.

When the movie was shot, very few Turkish movies had been mading. It was too expensive to make movies back then. This movie was a hope for young filmmakers with its low budget. The story goes in one place, it's a great movie. Umit Unal later made a movie called Nar, It's a movie set in one place again. I recommend it to those who like it.