‘Yellow Letters’ Review: İlker Çatak’s Turkey-Set Political Drama Has Much To Say About The Current State Of The Right-Leaning West — Berlin Film Festival

Set in Turkey and filmed on location in Germany with no attempt to hide the artifice, the trenchantly honest and terrifically acted new film from The Teachers’ Lounge director Ilker Çatak might be the most important film yet made about Donald Trump’s America. Though it obviously has more specific ties to Turkey’s authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Yellow Letters has plenty to share with western audiences about the role of art in political protest and the myriad forms that cancel culture can take. Most of all, it is about the way dictatorships actually work, by hitting working people where it hurts – in the pocket.

As in all middle-class horror stories, the two protagonists are blissfully unaware of what’s coming to them. Aziz Tufan (Tansu Biçer) is a college lecturer and playwright whose current masterpiece at the Ankara State Theater features people writhing in giant birdcages against a blood-red backdrop and stars his wife Derya (Özgü Namal), a famous local actress, in the lead role. The play is a pretentious silent scream about the parlous state of the world — “A place where language makes no difference” — or so we can only presume. “May darkness come!” Aziz’s muse commands, a prophesy of things to come, and the stage goes black.

Although there is a standing ovation, Derya doesn’t hang around to bask in the applause, much to the annoyance of a visiting politician who is angling for a selfie with the star. Derya couldn’t care less who he is and refuses to meet him. “He’s late, he needs an hour to sit down with his 50 people, and he doesn’t even mute his phone,” she says witheringly, noting that the old man’s mobile rang three times during the production. Back at home, the couple are mocked by their 13-year-old daughter who tells them that their three-hour plays are just too hard to take. “An hour would do,” she says. “You’re not saving the world.”

Aziz and Derya, however, very much think they are saving the world, and thus part of a protected caste. Reality, however, is on a collision course, and the first sign comes when Aziz, like the rest of his faculty, is suspended, ostensibly for encouraging their students to cut class and attend an anti-government demonstration. Derya tells him not to worry. “Tomorrow is a new day,” she says. “That talk got us into this,” Aziz replies. But the next day brings even worse news. Having received “a warning from above”, the theater’s management has ordered the play to be suspended, ostensibly the fallout from Derya’s snub. It is suggested that she apologize, but Derya is having none of it. “If you want me to kiss ass, we have a problem,” she fumes.

But things are about to get worse — a lot worse — starting with a visit from the landlord, whose housing block has caught the eyes of the police (“They say the place is full of traitors and terrorists”). Strange men start to follow them in the street, the bank refuses their application for a loan, and, to cap it all, Derya is fired by the theater company, who claim they’ve accepted the resignation she hasn’t actually tendered. Fast-forward a few months, and the entire family has moved to Istanbul (played by Hamburg) and is living with Aziz’s mother. To make ends meet, Aziz gets a job driving a mini cab, only to find that he is facing a four-year jail sentence for the “criticisms and insults” he is said to have levelled at the regime.

Sound familiar? It’s a playbook being used in America and other democracies right now to bring in state control by the back door, a system in which the punishment is the process. Surprisingly, though, as grim as it threatens to get, Yellow Letters doesn’t end entirely in darkness, as the ominous beginning suggests, offering a glimmer of hope among the ashes. It does, however, serve as a grim reminder that principles mean nothing to those who have none, and that right-wing governments always come for academia first.

Meanwhile, the situation at the Ankara State Theater has uncomfortable parallels with the recent shuttering of the Kennedy Center in Washington in response to the artists boycotting it in protest at its rebranding. In that respect, Yellow Letters isn’t so much as a warning from (recent) history as a harsh reminder that liberals tend to over-estimate and romanticize the power of their armory; intelligence and good intentions don’t really count for much, especially if you don’t always practice what you preach.

Title: Yellow Letters
Festival: Berlin (Competition)
Director: İlker Çatak
Screenwriters: Ilker Çatak, Ayda Meryem Çatak, Enis Köstepen
Cast: Özgü Namal, Tansu Biçer, Leyla Smyrna Cabas, İpek Bilgin
Sales: Be For Film
Running time: 2 hrs 8 mins