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Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Three Monkeys” opens with a striking close-up of Servet driving on a rainy night. His tiredness and exhaustion are evident on his face. Struggling to stay awake, he runs over a pedestrian. In the following scene, another car pulls over. As the driver starts to investigate the motionless body on the street, a voice from the passenger seat advises against getting involved and instead suggests noting down Servet’s car number. Once the car drives away, Servet slowly emerges from the shadows, visibly fearful and shocked, before entering his car and driving off.

We soon learn that Servet, an influential and ambitious politician, convinces his driver, Eyup, to take the blame for the accident. Servet promises Eyup a lump sum payment upon his release (which he predicts will be within six months to a year) and assures him that his son will continue receiving his salary during his absence.

A small, quiet town where the seasons come and go with a gush of wind that brings melancholy—this is a perfect setting to tell an intimate story of longing and desire. The immediate example that comes to mind is Tarkovsky’s “Mirror” (“Zerkalo”), where we see, in the opening scenes, a woman viewed from behind as she gazes toward the horizon—an iconic image of longing portrayed in cinema. As an avid admirer of Tarkovsky, we can clearly see Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s motivations to explore similar themes in his movies.

His feature-length directorial debut, “Kasaba,” (1997) portrays the interpersonal dynamics of a family in a small town and their relationship with the town itself. Episodic in its narrative, “Kasaba” tells the story of three generations within a single household and their contrasting worldviews. Despite a brief prologue that introduces us to the small town and its glacially somber livelihood with some beautiful monochromatic shots,...

The guilty pleasure of Cannes is seeing a 3 hour and 8 minute film that takes you into an unknown place and leads you toward a perfect ending. In this category Nuri Bilge Ceylan joins Andrei Tarkovsky and Theodoros Angelopoulos.

The Wild Pear Tree is about Sinan, a young man returning from college who is passionate about literature and has always wanted to be a writer. Returning to the village where he was born, he pours his heart and soul into scraping together the money he needs to be published, but his father’s debts catch up with him…

Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Ebru Ceylan, Zeynep Ozbatur Atakan, Murat Cemcir, Tamer Levent, Hazar Ergüçlü, and Dogu Demirkol in Cannes

Going on long walks, Sinan joins the town’s iman and his college mate and they carry on a long discussion about morality, each one offering a different viewpoint, one more liberal, one more...

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s 2002 film Distant (Uzak)- his third feature film (his first was 1997’s black and white The Small Town- Kasaba), is a significant step up from his good but flawed 1999 film Clouds Of May (Mayis Sikintisi). The earlier film had potential, but reeked of a small budget and improvised quality in the worst ways- plot holes and wooden acting from amateurs. That Clouds Of May succeeded on any level was a testament to Ceylan’s talent as a budding filmmaker. However, Distant is Ceylan’s arrival on the international scene as a great...