Italy’s Best International Feature Oscar-nominated Io Capitano starts its U.S. run today in ten market on 21 screens, a bit wider than usual for Cohen Media Group but with Academy final voting just started, reviews are gold for the odyssey that director Matteo Garrone calls “a movie about human rights. About the rights of everybody to move, to look for a better life.”
That’s the quest of teenage cousins Seydou (Seydou Sarr) and Moussa (Moustapha Fall), who live in a close-knit village in Senegal. They’re not starving, not in danger. They are poor, restless, want a shot at something better in Europe and are oblivious to the horrors along the way.
Sarr won Best Emerging Actor at the Venice premiere of the film, which marks the onscreen debut for both stars and the first acting role for Sarr, who, Deadline’s review says, “carries the whole movie...
That’s the quest of teenage cousins Seydou (Seydou Sarr) and Moussa (Moustapha Fall), who live in a close-knit village in Senegal. They’re not starving, not in danger. They are poor, restless, want a shot at something better in Europe and are oblivious to the horrors along the way.
Sarr won Best Emerging Actor at the Venice premiere of the film, which marks the onscreen debut for both stars and the first acting role for Sarr, who, Deadline’s review says, “carries the whole movie...
- 2/23/2024
- by Jill Goldsmith
- Deadline Film + TV
To Sir, With Ego: Ceylan Waltzes with Narcissism in Captivating Character Study
The filmography of Nuri Bilge Ceylan is characterized by complex examinations of human nature, stretched across scenarios which have only become more dense over the past two decades. His latest, About Dry Grasses, co-written by his regular collaborator (and wife) Ebru Ceylan and Akin Aksu (returning for script duty after first working on Ceylan’s 2018 title The Wild Pear Tree) showcases, once again, an unparalleled level of dialogue in modern cinema. Arguably less abstruse than some of his past works, this latest marathon focuses on a generally unfavorable protagonist, a manipulative narcissist whose behavior is both fascinating and repellant as it is understandable.…...
The filmography of Nuri Bilge Ceylan is characterized by complex examinations of human nature, stretched across scenarios which have only become more dense over the past two decades. His latest, About Dry Grasses, co-written by his regular collaborator (and wife) Ebru Ceylan and Akin Aksu (returning for script duty after first working on Ceylan’s 2018 title The Wild Pear Tree) showcases, once again, an unparalleled level of dialogue in modern cinema. Arguably less abstruse than some of his past works, this latest marathon focuses on a generally unfavorable protagonist, a manipulative narcissist whose behavior is both fascinating and repellant as it is understandable.…...
- 2/23/2024
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Turkey’s Best International Feature Oscar entry “About Dry Grasses” defrosts the blurred lines between teacher and student, colleague and mentor, in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s epically ambitioned, Cannes award-winning drama.
IndieWire debuts the trailer for the film that follows an abusive teacher (Deniz Celiloğlu) as he grapples with living in icy Anatolia, including favoring one pupil (Ece Bağcı), and seeking solace with a fellow teacher.
Samet (Celiloğlu) is a young art teacher now in his fourth year of compulsory service in a remote village in Anatolia. After a turn of events he can hardly make sense of, as is the case of many a Ceylan character facing a void, he loses his hopes of escaping the grim life he seems to be stuck in. Will his encounter with Nuray, also a teacher, help him overcome his angst? Musab Ekici also stars as Samet’s roommate.
The film is directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan,...
IndieWire debuts the trailer for the film that follows an abusive teacher (Deniz Celiloğlu) as he grapples with living in icy Anatolia, including favoring one pupil (Ece Bağcı), and seeking solace with a fellow teacher.
Samet (Celiloğlu) is a young art teacher now in his fourth year of compulsory service in a remote village in Anatolia. After a turn of events he can hardly make sense of, as is the case of many a Ceylan character facing a void, he loses his hopes of escaping the grim life he seems to be stuck in. Will his encounter with Nuray, also a teacher, help him overcome his angst? Musab Ekici also stars as Samet’s roommate.
The film is directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan,...
- 11/28/2023
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
About Dry Grasses, the latest film from Nuri Bilge Ceylan that played in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, was submitted by Turkey on Friday to represent the country in the Oscar International Feature Oscar race.
It’s the sixth time Turkey has selected a Ceylan film to represent the country at the Academy Awards, though none have advanced to the final nomination stage. He won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2014 for Winter’s Sleep.
About Dry Grasses centers on a young art teacher who is finishing his fourth year of compulsory service in a remote village in Anatolia. After a turn of events he can hardly make sense of, he loses his hopes of escaping the grim life he seems to be stuck in. An encounter with Nuray, herself a teacher, could be the key to overcoming his angst.
Merve Dizdar, who played Nuray, won...
It’s the sixth time Turkey has selected a Ceylan film to represent the country at the Academy Awards, though none have advanced to the final nomination stage. He won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2014 for Winter’s Sleep.
About Dry Grasses centers on a young art teacher who is finishing his fourth year of compulsory service in a remote village in Anatolia. After a turn of events he can hardly make sense of, he loses his hopes of escaping the grim life he seems to be stuck in. An encounter with Nuray, herself a teacher, could be the key to overcoming his angst.
Merve Dizdar, who played Nuray, won...
- 9/8/2023
- by Patrick Hipes
- Deadline Film + TV
North American premiere at TIFF on September 13.
Turkey has selected Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses as its submission for the Academy Awards.
‘About Dry Grasses’: Cannes Review
About Dry Grasses premiered in Cannes where Merve Dizdar won the best actress award and will receive its North American premiere at TIFF on September 13
and screen in the Main Slate at the New York Film Festival in October.
Deniz Celiloglu, Merve Dizdar, Musab Ekici and Eve Bagci star in the story about Samet, a young art teacher finishing his fourth year of compulsory service in a remote village in Anatolia.
Turkey has selected Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses as its submission for the Academy Awards.
‘About Dry Grasses’: Cannes Review
About Dry Grasses premiered in Cannes where Merve Dizdar won the best actress award and will receive its North American premiere at TIFF on September 13
and screen in the Main Slate at the New York Film Festival in October.
Deniz Celiloglu, Merve Dizdar, Musab Ekici and Eve Bagci star in the story about Samet, a young art teacher finishing his fourth year of compulsory service in a remote village in Anatolia.
- 9/8/2023
- by Jeremy Kay
- ScreenDaily
The U.S. rights for Cannes Film Festival award winner “About Dry Grasses” have been acquired by Sideshow and Janus Films.
“About Dry Grasses” follows Samet, a young art teacher who is finishing his fourth year of compulsory service in a remote village in Anatolia. After a turn of events he can hardly make sense of, he loses his hopes of escaping the grim life he seems to be stuck in. But an encounter with another teacher named Nuray offers a chance to help him overcome his angst.
The film, which screened in Competition to rave reviews and won the Best Actress honor for Merve Dizdar’s performance, has a screenplay written by Akin Aksu, Ebru Ceylan and Nuri Bilge Ceylan. In addition to Dizdar, the film stars Deniz Celiloglu, Musab Ekici and Eve Bagci. NBC Film, Memento Production and Komplizen Film Production serve as producers.
Sideshow and Janus Films...
“About Dry Grasses” follows Samet, a young art teacher who is finishing his fourth year of compulsory service in a remote village in Anatolia. After a turn of events he can hardly make sense of, he loses his hopes of escaping the grim life he seems to be stuck in. But an encounter with another teacher named Nuray offers a chance to help him overcome his angst.
The film, which screened in Competition to rave reviews and won the Best Actress honor for Merve Dizdar’s performance, has a screenplay written by Akin Aksu, Ebru Ceylan and Nuri Bilge Ceylan. In addition to Dizdar, the film stars Deniz Celiloglu, Musab Ekici and Eve Bagci. NBC Film, Memento Production and Komplizen Film Production serve as producers.
Sideshow and Janus Films...
- 5/31/2023
- by Lucas Manfredi
- The Wrap
Sideshow and Janus Films have picked up U.S. rights to Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Cannes Film Festival competition entry About Dry Grasses, securing the Turkish drama from sales group Playtime.
The film stars Deniz Celiloglu as a young art teacher, sent to a remote village in Anatolia for his final year of compulsory national service, who is overcome with angst and a sense of hopelessness about the future. An encounter with Nuray, another teacher, played by Merve Dizdar, offers the possibility of an escape. Dizdar won best actress honor in Cannes this year for her performance.
Sideshow and Janus Films plan to tour About Dry Grasses through the fall film festivals before releasing the movie in theaters stateside. The distributors took a similar approach with their joint 2021 Cannes acquisition, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car, another slow-burning drama, eventually landing four Oscar nominations, and one win — for best international feature.
The film stars Deniz Celiloglu as a young art teacher, sent to a remote village in Anatolia for his final year of compulsory national service, who is overcome with angst and a sense of hopelessness about the future. An encounter with Nuray, another teacher, played by Merve Dizdar, offers the possibility of an escape. Dizdar won best actress honor in Cannes this year for her performance.
Sideshow and Janus Films plan to tour About Dry Grasses through the fall film festivals before releasing the movie in theaters stateside. The distributors took a similar approach with their joint 2021 Cannes acquisition, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car, another slow-burning drama, eventually landing four Oscar nominations, and one win — for best international feature.
- 5/31/2023
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Cannes Review: About Dry Grasses is a Luminous Summation of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Soul-Stirring Cinema
The pastures in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s luminous new film are only dry at the very end. Save for that brief summery coda, the landscape in About Dry Grasses remains a snowcapped immensity where prairies are ringed by belittling peaks, people stand out as calligraphic silhouettes, and snow falls so heavy as to blot out everything. It’s as if it fell “to make oblivion possible,” observes art teacher Samet (Deniz Celiloglu), and in a film populated with wanderers trying to start anew, those words echo like a prayer. Geographically and thematically close to the rest of Ceylan’s oeuvre, the film finds him working once again in a remote corner of Eastern Anatolia and revisiting leitmotifs in his preferred mode: long, talky symposiums that pit characters against each other in games of verbal fencing. But none of it feels like a retreading. If anything, About Dry Grasses is both...
- 5/27/2023
- by Leonardo Goi
- The Film Stage
Nuri Bilge Ceylan loves snow. The depths of winter, people in thick coats, frozen taps, the sense that these long, bitterly cold seasons in mountain regions will never end. This is all working material for the Turkish master whose Winter Sleep won the Palme d’Or in 2014. “What am I doing here?” is the regular moan from Samet (Deniz Celiloglu), the art teacher in the village school in About Dry Grasses.
Meaning: what is a man of the world doing teaching potato farmers’ children how to draw a horse? Why is he in this desolate country with two seasons that turn over so quickly that once the snow melts, the buried yellow grass almost immediately is turned brown by the fierce summer sun? Even the grass has no chance in life: It’s unbearable. It’s like him, he muses in a rare voice-over, condemned by circumstance to insignificance.
Ceylan...
Meaning: what is a man of the world doing teaching potato farmers’ children how to draw a horse? Why is he in this desolate country with two seasons that turn over so quickly that once the snow melts, the buried yellow grass almost immediately is turned brown by the fierce summer sun? Even the grass has no chance in life: It’s unbearable. It’s like him, he muses in a rare voice-over, condemned by circumstance to insignificance.
Ceylan...
- 5/20/2023
- by Stephanie Bunbury
- Deadline Film + TV
To this Turkish critic, Nuri Bilge Ceylan is our Mike Leigh and Anton Chekhov in one, with multilayered characters of social and political complexities engaging through dialogue lines that feel both off-the-cuff and studiously planned in their lavish rhythms. Ceylan is also a master of luxuriously slow cinema with a recognizable visual style, haunting, minimalistic and sneakily riveting across textured, widescreen pastoral scenes and dimly-lit interiors that evolve with peerless patience.
Written by Ceylan, Akin Aksu and Ebru Ceylan, his latest stunner “About Dry Grasses”—Ceylan’s best feature since “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia”—flutters with all these pictorial qualities and emotional dispositions. It’s a searing, mesmerizing and unforgettably wintry mood piece and character study that is in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, nearly a decade after his “Winter Sleep” won the Palme d’Or.
It’s also a deeply Turkish film that gently...
Written by Ceylan, Akin Aksu and Ebru Ceylan, his latest stunner “About Dry Grasses”—Ceylan’s best feature since “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia”—flutters with all these pictorial qualities and emotional dispositions. It’s a searing, mesmerizing and unforgettably wintry mood piece and character study that is in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, nearly a decade after his “Winter Sleep” won the Palme d’Or.
It’s also a deeply Turkish film that gently...
- 5/19/2023
- by Tomris Laffly
- The Wrap
Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan continues to explore his homeland’s teeming dichotomies — city/rural, secularism/faith, individualism/tradition and so forth — in About Dry Grasses, his latest Cannes competition entrant, which revolves around schoolteachers in a remote rural community. Running true to recent form (see 2014 Palme d’Or winner Winter Sleep and 2018’s Cannes-entrant The Wild Pear Tree), despite the setting in contemporary Anatolia, this latest work nevertheless plays like an adaptation of some lost, weighty 19th-century Russian novel of ideas beloved by mid-20th existentialists and largely forgotten until Ceylan repurposed it.
Of course, that’s not the actual case, and the script was written by Ceylan himself, his wife and frequent collaborator Erbu Ceylan and Akin Aksu. All the same, the screenplay is distinctly opaque, despite the huge chunks of philosophical dialogue and debate it delivers. The film is edited in a seemingly deliberately raggedy style, with...
Of course, that’s not the actual case, and the script was written by Ceylan himself, his wife and frequent collaborator Erbu Ceylan and Akin Aksu. All the same, the screenplay is distinctly opaque, despite the huge chunks of philosophical dialogue and debate it delivers. The film is edited in a seemingly deliberately raggedy style, with...
- 5/19/2023
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
If you try and define modern cinema from Turkey, you simply cannot avoid mentioning the body of work of director Nuri Bilge Ceylan. His eighth feature, which competed in for the Palm d’Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, was inspired by a story of a father and son who lived near Ceylan’s home town. The son, Akin Aksu, also co-wrote the script for the film, which, typical of Ceylan’s work, presents an intersection of a person’s biography and the current state of his home country. To be precise, “The Wild Pear Tree” combines the rich visual beauty while telling a story of people suffering from a lack of direction in their lives, thus seeming lost and even quite desperate.
“The Wild Pear Tree” screened at Vesoul International Festival of Asian Cinema
Before his final exams as a teacher, Sinan (Aydin Doğu Demirkol) returns to Çan, his hometown,...
“The Wild Pear Tree” screened at Vesoul International Festival of Asian Cinema
Before his final exams as a teacher, Sinan (Aydin Doğu Demirkol) returns to Çan, his hometown,...
- 2/21/2020
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
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