O Caminho

Yusuf (Tuncay Akça) wants after a long time, to find a woman, but at the first military roadblock, he is taken into custody having lost his papers. His journey is over as it will take several days to verify who he is.

Seyit (Tarik Akan) looking forward to his wife and son. But arriving home he learns that his wife was unfaithful to him and she was subsequently banished from the family. She is held in a dungeon and tradition demands that he kills her.

Mehmet (Halil Ergün) is facing the vendetta, since by his fault his wife's brother died. Her family is furious that he wants to take his wife and children to flee with them.

Ömer (Necmettin Çobanoglu) arrives in his native Kurdish village and sees the military engaged in a policy to kill everyone who does not obey.

Meviat (Hikmet Çelik) takes the place of his deceased brother in the family, but it quickly becomes clear to him that the supposed freedom hardly differs by religious and tradition-bound pressure of a prison.

All have dreams of what they will do in their short freedom, but those dreams are quickly dashed. They find that those who are not in a concrete prison are in a prison made by social tradition and by the government. The only freedom available in Turkey at this time is death.

Thank Yilmaz Guney and Serif Goren for doing such a tremendous movie.Actings are excellent.This movie is the proof of the possibility to make great films with limited financial resources.Tarik Akan gives a perfect performance.The most I liked in the movie is the hesitation of Seyit Ali to leave Zine alone on the mount.Yol is a very well acted, edited, and directed movie.Of course it would be a great fault to forget the screen written by Yilmaz Guney.Thank people who gives us the opportunity to see "Yol" .

Turkey is officially the only functioning democracy in the Middle East, along with Israel. But "Yol" shows that regardless of Turkey's official classification, it does have political prisoners. In this case, five of them are given a leave so that they can visit their families. While on their leaves, they (and the audience) get to see the realities of life. They may have been released from prison, but there are some metaphoric prisons that we can never escape, no matter how free we consider ourselves.

It was interesting that Yilmaz Guney managed to make this movie from jail. He did a very good job here.

This excellent movie shows how people in their life are the prisoner of their situation. The live in a world and society that expects them things to do and behave, and the do and behave as expected, even if they don't feel happy with it, or hurts them. They have to. This is a lesson for myself, and life as I experience it. Yhis is dramatically illustrated in the movie in the scene in which the husband is forcing his wife to go with him through the mountains, through the snow. Which has a bad ending. I remember this scene even more than 20 years after I saw it ever. This 'being prisoner of your situation' is not specific for the Turkish or any culture. I think it is typical for humans in general. Look around and you will see.

Five prisoners are given permission to visit their homes, and they get on their ways. Once out, we discover that we all live in a big prison, on endless roads which start and seem not to end. All roads end. Eventually. Absolutely harsh, touching, fierce, itching and scratching, disturbing movie about reality. A must see for those who have their own cliché definitons of how a "road movie" must be like.