Canim Kardesim

Turk ve Dunya sinema tarihi için unutulmaz bir Drama Basyapiti

This film is clearly showing us the life of "the missing ones". In the middle of the poverty , ignorance and helplessness. One depressed effort against the death and trying to handle it with happiness.Maybe the only film of Ertem Egilmez (The builder of modern Turkish cinema),doesn't concern about the studio and ticket sales.

The movie contains outstanding performances of two very big Turkish actors (Tarik Akan and Halit Akçatepe) , also other very important actor and actresses in small roles such as Metin Akpinar,Kemal Sunal and Adile Naşit.

It is simply the peak of Turkish drama...

There are tons of things to write about quality and essence of Canım Kardeşim. (My Dearest Little Brother) At first sight it looks like an ordinary melodrama (Melodramas had a great power on Turkish viewer especially at late 70's and early 80's) but the realistic aspect of storytelling and good actors, (Tarık Akan, Halit Akçatepe, with their small role Metin Akpınar and legendary Kemal Sunal) it differs from others. The main keywords of the film are terminal sickness of a child, poverty, dysfunctional family, hard life conditions and television era on Turkey. Spaghetti eating scene, clean urine sample buying scene and final scene were unforgettable. Every foreign people who wants to learn turk style arabesque and emotionality of them or every ex-pat who lives in Turkey must watch this film to understand the crybaby turks.

"Canim Kardesim" is the saddest movie of Turkish film industry aka. "Yesilcam". The director Ertem Egilmez is generally makes film on comedy. Back in days critics told him you can't shoot drama. And his answer was "I'm gonna shoot a drama and you all gonna cry." Finally he made this movie and we all crying every time we watched Canim Kardesim.

I remember how we rejoiced when a television was brought into our house, in almost the same years, when I was also around the age of Kahraman (the little boy in the movie) and we were living in a ghetto as poor as the one in the movie. One of those years I lost my elder sister in a traffic accident, who was going to primary school in a neighborhood on the opposite side of the highway, because there was no school in our newly "built" slum. I wasn't aware of the severeness of the tragedy because of my age but my "dear mother" suffered from that incident all her life. Thereby I witness the movie is so real, besides being one of the best drama movies of the movie industry - FYI, I don't only mean among the Turkish films.