''Don't Let Them Shoot the Kite'' () is a 1989 Turkish

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. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular ...

, co-written, co-produced and directed by

Tunç Başaran Tunç Başaran (October 1, 1938 – December 18, 2019) was a Turkish people, Turkish screenwriter, film director, film producer and actor. Biography After attending the Faculty of Literature for a while he left school and started working as a ...

based on a 1986

novella A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most novelettes and short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) ...

by , featuring Nur Sürer as a female political prisoner who befriends the child of a fellow inmate. The film was screened in competition at the 26th

Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival The Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival (), 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 important film festival in Turkey. Since 2009, t ...

, where it won Golden Oranges for Best Film, Best Actress, Best Screenplay and Best Cinematography, the 10th Mediterranean International Film Festival, where it won 2nd Best Film, and the 8th

Istanbul International Film Festival The Istanbul Film Festival () is the first and oldest international film festival in Turkey, organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts. It is held every year in April in movie theaters in Istanbul, Turkey. As mentioned in its reg ...

, where it won Best Turkish Film. The film was selected as the Turkish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the

62nd Academy Awards The 62nd Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films of 1989 and took place on March 26, 1990, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles beginning at 6:00 p ...

, but was not accepted as a nominee. The film is set in 1984

Ankara Ankara is the capital city of Turkey and List of national capitals by area, the largest capital by area in the world. Located in the Central Anatolia Region, central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5,290,822 in its urban center ( ...

, during the aftermath of the 1980 Turkish coup. It is currently available to legally stream with English subtitles through the German media website .

Plot

When a woman is sent to prison for drug

smuggling Smuggling is the illegal transportation of objects, substances, information or people, such as out of a house or buildings, into a prison, or across an international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations. More broadly, soc ...

, Barış, her young son, is sent with her, as is the custom in Turkey. Inside this all-women’s penitentiary, Barış () searches for companionship and guidance—and finds them both in the form of Inci ( Nur Sürer), a political prisoner with whom he forms a very special bond. A beautifully observed, tender story of the growing affection between a woman and a child who is not her own,

’s film, with a screenplay by based on her novel, builds an effective counterpoint between the prison world, with its discipline, intrigues and threat of violence, and the private space Inci and Barış manage to create for themselves. Voted Best Turkish Film of the Year at the 1989 Istanbul Film Festival. Venue: Walter Reade Theater, Howard Gilman Theater

Cast

* Nur Sürer as İnci * as Barış * Füsun Demirel as Fatma * as Zeynep * Güzin Özipek as Sultanteyze * as Selma * as Filiz * Meral Çetinkaya as Safinaz * as Sümbül

Production

The film is based on a 1986 novella by Feride Çiçekoğlu, who was inspired by the four years she spent as a political prisoner following the 1980 Turkish coup. Director

's wife, Jale, served as the film's

art director Art director is a title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, live-action and animated film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supe ...

. The film was produced on a very limited budget, as was common in Turkey at the time. Başaran remarked, "If I were given $1 million to make a picture, I would use the money to make four films." Although the film is set in Ankara, many of the prison scenes were filmed in Istanbul's Sultanahmet Jail. Ankara's Ulucanlar Prison has also been identified as one of the filming locations.

Critical reception

In ''The Routledge Dictionary of Turkish Cinema'', Gönül Dönmez-Colin calls ''Don't Let Them Shoot the Kite'' "one of the classics of Turkish cinema", and in ''World Film Locations: Istanbul'', Özlem Köksal writes that "

aris Aris or ARIS may refer to: People * Aris (surname) Given name * Aris Alexandrou, Greek writer * Aris Brimanis, ice hockey player * Aris Christofellis, Greek male soprano * Aris Gavelas, Greek sprinter * Aris Konstantinidis, Greek architect * ...

leaning against the imposing prison wall with hands in his pockets is definitely an iconic image in Turkish cinema." Kevin Thomas of the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

'' named ''Don't Let Them Shoot the Kite'' as a highlight of the 1990 L.A. Film Festival.

References

External links