''The Market: A Tale of Trade'' ( tr, Pazar: Bir Ticaret Masalı) is a 2008 internationally co-produced

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...

written and directed by

Ben Hopkins Ben Hopkins (born 1969) is a British film director, screenwriter and novelist. His film ''Simon Magus'' entered the 49th Berlin International Film Festival competition in 1999. His 2008 film, '' The Market: A Tale of Trade'' ( tr, Pazar: Bir ...

and starring Tayanç Ayaydın as a small-time

black market A black market, underground economy, or shadow economy is a clandestine market or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality or is characterized by noncompliance with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the se ...

trader in a provincial town in eastern

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

tasked with procuring some valuable medicine. The film, which went on nationwide general release across Turkey on , has won awards at film festivals in Locarno, Ghent and Antalya, where it was the first film directed by a foreigner to win an award in the national competition.

Production

The film was shot on location in

Van Province Van Province ( tr, Van ili, ku, Parezgêha Wanê, Armenian: Վանի մարզ) is a province in the Eastern Anatolian region of Turkey, between Lake Van and the Iranian border. It is 19,069 km2 in area and had a population of 1,035,418 at ...

, Turkey in April–June 2007.

Premise

From the film's official website: "1994. Mihram is a comic and inventive small-time blackmarket trader in a provincial town in Eastern Turkey. He has many ideas for good business deals, but never enough capital to realise them. One day the hospital supply truck is robbed, and the local GP hires Mihram to find some medicines on the black market. Finally, Mihram has the necessary capital to make a good deal, but he will have to gamble with the community’s money. If he loses, he will be an outcast. If he wins, he will have a good start-up business. But he hasn’t reckoned with two things – the local mafia, and the inscrutable rules of the marketplace."

Release

The film premiered at the

Locarno International Film Festival The Locarno Film Festival is an annual film festival, held every August in Locarno, Switzerland. Founded in 1946, the festival screens films in various competitive and non-competitive sections, including feature-length narrative, documentary, sh ...

in 2008. It has been released in cinemas in Germany, Belgium, Holland and Turkey. The UK release was on 16 April 2010 and it has since been broadcast on the digital television channel BBC4.

Awards

Best Actor Best Actor is the name of an award which is presented by various film, television and theatre organizations, festivals, and people's awards to leading actors in a film, television series, television film or play. The term most often refers to th ...

: Tayanç Ayaydın (won) *Ghent International Film Festival Best Film (won) *

Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival The Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival ( tr, Antalya Altın Portakal Film Festivali), known for a few years from 2015 as Antalya International Film Festival, is a film festival, held annually since 1963 in Antalya, and is the second most impor ...

**Best Film (won) **Best Actor: Tayanç Ayaydın (won) **Best Script (won) **Best Costume (won)

References

External links