Nuri Bilge Ceylan, the acclaimed Turkish director, was met with lengthy applause at this year’s Cannes Film Festival following the premiere of his latest drama, “About Dry Grasses” (“Kuru Otlar Üstüne”).
The drama focuses on a young teacher who hopes to be appointed to the Turkish metropolis Istanbul after his mandatory assignment at a small village in eastern Türkiye. The film, jointly produced by the Turkish public broadcaster TRT and ARTE France, premiered Friday. The more than three-hour film stars Deniz Celiloğlu, Merve Dizdar, Musab Ekici and Ece Bağcı.
Ceylan said at a news conference Saturday that the film was shot amid the backdrop of COVID-19, and there were difficulties linked to the pandemic.
Noting that the crew traveled a lot to find suitable locations to shoot the movie, Ceylan said it was shot in villages around the Karayazı district of eastern Erzurum province.
The Turkish director explained that most scenes were filmed in different villages and then shown as a single place, thanks to editing.
Asked about the characters, Ceylan said: “The feelings of all my characters are feelings I have experienced within myself. Even if they were just little traces of feeling, not something powerful.”
The auteur also explained that sometimes people find the characters in his movies “antiheroes.” He said: “That is not the impression I have. However, it depends on the vision you may have personally. I speak about very familiar feelings that we may feel.”
Ceylan said in the “remote” environment: “For the main character, it was necessary to be somewhere very isolated. Because happiness can be achieved wherever you are, that’s at least what people think.”
“If you are unhappy, you always tell yourself you might be happy if you go somewhere else. Even people in Istanbul think that they could be happier elsewhere.”
“It’s a way of running away from things. They always think that it’s the place where they live responsible for their being unhappy, and the character says, ‘If I’m transferred ... things will be fine again.’ He feels very foreign to the world where he lives wherever he is,” he added.
Renowned Turkish filmmaker Yılmaz Güney, whose works often portray working-class people’s lives on the big screen, brought the first Palme d’Or to Türkiye in 1982 with “Yol” (“The Road”). In 2014, Ceylan won the top award for “Winter Sleep.” In 2009, he served on the main competition jury.
Martin Scorsese’s new film about the 1920 murders that ravaged an Oklahoma Native American reservation got a rousing stand ovation at the festival.
The audience’s thunderous applause lasted nine minutes and continued well after the credits finished and the lights came back on, Variety reported.
The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone and runs for three hours and 26 minutes.
“This was such a moving experience; I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything like this,” Scorsese said after the screening.
His new film investigates the murders of wealthy Osage people in Osage County. It also looks into the birth of the FBI in the United States.
The warm reception at the festival is a good sign for Apple Original Films, which reportedly gave Scorsese a $200 million budget to adapt the story from the famous 2017 book of the same name.
Gladstone, who plays an Osage woman targeted for her oil wealth, is already receiving rave reviews and had to fight back the tears as the festival crowd cheered.
Some on social media were already tapping her performance as a potential award winner.
The applause may have lasted longer had Scorsese not been handed the mic to deliver a speech afterward. Instead, the “Goodfellas” director thanked the Osage Nation and Apple.
“Apple did so great by us,” he said, reminiscing on the Oklahoma filming. “There was lots of grass. I’m a New Yorker. I was shocked. This was an amazing experience. We lived in that world,” he added.
DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Gladstone and Jesse Plemons all star in the film and walked the Cannes red carpet before the screening.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” will hit theatres on Oct. 20 and will be released on Apple’s streaming service later.
