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At Turkey’s oldest zoo, a lonely manager and a withdrawn female officer form an unlikely bond: as they hide the death of the zoo’s oldest inhabitant, an Anatolian leopard.

In order to stop the privatization process and fake its escape, they set in motion an absurd charade that spins out of control.

In Turkey’s grey and quiet capital, the ghost of this leopard will persist.

The critically-acclaimed, wickedly clever comedy, which wowed audiences at TIFF and won the festival’s coveted Fipresci Jury Award, arrives in U.S. cinemas next Friday, November 4th.

The feature debut of acclaimed short filmmaker Emre Kayiş, the picture stars Uğur Polat, İpek Türktan, Tansu Bi ̇çer, Ege Aydan, Nuri Gökaşan, Osman Alkaş, and Seyithan Özdemir.

Having a loser as a protagonist is not exactly unusual in cinema. What would happen though, if you combined such a character with a zoo that is about to be demolished, an animal on the brink of extinction and a crime? Emre Kayis gives the answer to this question in a film that also functions as a metaphor on a number of levels.

“Anatolian Leopard” is screening at the 62nd Thessaloniki International Film Festival

The aforementioned loser is Fikret, the manager of a failing zoo in Ankara, with his life becoming evident in one of the initial scenes, where the parking spot reserved for the director of the organization, is occupied by anyone but him, who has to park far away from his office and walk in the mud to reach it. The zoo is on the brink of collapse, with the employees leaving one after the other, while a...