Yellow Letters

Winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Derya and Aziz are the golden couple of Ankara’s theatre scene. An incident on an opening night suddenly plunges them into a political storm that threatens their livelihoods and future. Hoping for a fresh start, they move to Istanbul with their daughter, but as financial pressures mount, their relationship begins to fracture. İlker Çatak (The Teachers’ Lounge) gradually exposes the contradictions between the couple’s ideals and the choices they make when their security and status are taken away. In a striking cinematic device, the film takes place in Ankara and Istanbul but was shot entirely in Germany, with Berlin and Hamburg standing in for the Turkish cities – a conceit Çatak deliberately makes visible. The result is a smart, unsettling drama about freedom, relationships and the price of staying true to one’s principles.