Overview
Filming of ''Umut'' began in April 1970 inPlot
The protagonist of the film is Cabbar (performed by Güney). Cabbar is directed to support his crowded kurdish family - six children, a wife, and a grandmother - with the earnings from an old phaeton with two exhausted, half-dead horses. The family tries to survive in a damp and dingy living-quarters. Cabbar does not have a good run of business. He is indebted almost to everyone. His single hope is in the lottery tickets, which he continuously buys. He has bound his hope to these pieces of paper. Life is, on the other hand, getting even harder day by day.One day a fancy car called Mercedes hits the horse, while it stands parking alongside sidewalk. In this traffic accident his horse dies. Cabbar is innocent but weak as well. This accident makes him see that the established order is accorded to the “poor and strong”. Even the police finds him guilty. Henceforth he sells the few sticks, which he owns only. He scratches together some money to buy a new horse. In the meantime, the creditors sell the phaeton and the remaining horse, and shared the money according to the debts of Cabber between themselves. Cabbar is plunged into despair. A friend of Cabbar, Hasan, has been inculcating the turning up a buried treasure into Cabbar. In his helplessness, Cabbar lends himself to illusions. After a preacher's faith healing sessions they -Cabbar, Hasan, and the preacher- go on treasure’s way. In the second half of the film, this search for the unfindable treasure is narrated. This search is a natural continuity of the gradually worsening events, which makes Cabbar take refuge on the preacher, in whom he had no belief at all at the beginning. As can be seen, Güney set down three alternatives for Cabbar: First, he goes after the preacher and searches the treasure; second, he continues to show attitude of expectancy in the lottery tickets; third, he takes part in an organized opposition with other phaeton drivers. However, Cabbar runs away from political and social activities and lastly he becomes a victim of empty promises. He escaped realities and looks for the shelter in fantasies. Güney could make Cabbar politically conscious, even make him the leader of this opposition, and lastly lead him to success or failure, but Güney chose to leave his protagonist blind. The film finished with an interesting and striking scene. Cabbar, who left his wife, children, and mother desperate in the cause of treasure search, opens his hands to a God, whom he does not know, he begins to turn around in the middle of arid lands. He has gone mad.Analysis
Güney asserted before any political action can be organized to change the economic system, the would-be actors must abandon the idea that they possess a self profoundly different from other selves, that they pursue a destiny which is uniquely their own as individuals. The basic aim of ''Umut'' is to demonstrate that people who fight alone have no alternative but to place their trust in luck (lottery) and magic (treasure hunting). Briefly, Güney tried to show ideology as ideology to those who would claim that Cabbar’s situation is a natural state of affairs. As Althusser has stated, consciousness of an ideology as ideology, is the moment in which ideology explodes, revealing the reality it had obscured. This film, which carries some traces from Güney’s own life, manifested itself with its ability to describe the story with an extraordinary reality. Güney thought that we had to look at, to grab to, and reflect the realities of the streets we are wandering and passing rapidly through. The people shown in ''Umut'' are mostly “real” people, not actors or actresses. The environment and the living conditions are real, Güney did not use prepared film sets and lightings for ''Umut''. The scenes showing Cabbar at home with his 5 children, wife, and mother are very good examples of his effort to show life and the environment closest to its reality. With this film, Güney introduces a kind of documentarism into the Turkish cinema. As the neo-realismo movie makers, Güney created a cinema, where the audience is able to interpret the end of the film in whatever direction he/she wants. For instance, there is no definite ends in neo-realismo, likewise ''Umut''’s end is not definite either, the future is uncertain. Of course, it was not too late that ''Umut'' was censored. The prohibition of that film is a very good case to determine the social, economic, and political conditions ofAwards won
* Best film, 2nd Adana Golden Boll Film Festival, 1970 * Best director, 2nd Adana Golden Boll Film Festival, 1970 * Best scenario, 2nd Adana Golden Boll Film Festival, 1970 * Best actor, 2nd Adana Golden Boll Film Festival, 1970 * Best photography (Kaya Ererez), 2nd Adana Golden Boll Film Festival, 1970 * Best actor, Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival * Selectors' Commission Special Prize, Grenoble Film FestivalExternal links
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