The meticulously organised loneliness of the divorced photographer Mahmut is disrupted when his nephew Yusuf comes to stay with him. Mahmut is a successful advertising photographer in Istanbul, the younger Yusuf comes from the countryside to the city to look for work as a merchant seaman. While Mahmut obviously has difficulty with the presence of his uninvited guest, the well-intentioned yet socially handicapped Yusuf finds it equally difficult to find his feet in the city. It is hard to get a job and making contact with the cynical intellectual Mahmut is even harder. A short business trip to the countryside doesn’t help bring the two closer together. The lonely men live their lives almost without words. Mahmut’s life is set almost entirely indoors, while Yusuf roams a snow-covered Istanbul that is depicted by Ceylan with breathtaking beauty -picturesque and sharply honed -in sound and pictures. Ceylan -responsible for production, screenplay, camera and cutting, as in his previous films Kasaba en Clouds of May -is a master in revealing the characters of the two protagonists, their all-too-human frustrations and dreams, in a way that will stay with us for a long time. Authors’ cinema at its most beautiful. Protagonist Toprak (Yusuf) was killed in a car crash shortly after the first screening. Posthumously, he was given the prize for the best actor in Cannes, together with Özdemir (Mahmut). Uzak won the Grand Jury Prize there.
