Members’ Screening: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey, 2011, 158 mins, Turkish with English subtitles

Winner of the Grand Prix at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, Turkish master Nuri Birge Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is a tale of a grim murder investigation. Told through beautiful cinematography composed of wide-angle shots picturing the vastness and beauty of the landscape, police and prosecutors exhume a buried body over one long night in the Anatolian steppes. One of The Wild Pear Tree’s director’s earlier films, and his first widely acclaimed feature, this is an intense and studied drama that quickly became a reference point of contemporary cinema.