Synopsis

Winner of the Best Film and FIPRESCI prizes at the Istanbul International Film Festival, Reha Erdem's Times and Winds is a film "bewitched by the rhythms of everyday life" (The Village Voice) that "packs a poetic-spiritual punch way beyond its placid surface" (Variety). Laying bare forbidden yearnings, dawning sexuality, and oedipal rage, it tells the story of three pre-adolescent friends coming of age in a remote Turkish mountain village.

Young teen Omer (Özkan Özen) contemplates the unthinkable as he bitterly struggles under the loveless emotional yoke of his scornful Muslim cleric father. Yakup (Ali Bey Kayali), Omer's best friend, obsesses over a beautiful schoolteacher. Yildiz (Elit Iscan) recoils from burgeoning womanhood, and from the sordid carnal realities she has grown too old to ignore.

Blessed with painterly wide-screen visuals, Estonian composer Arvo Part's sublime music score, and phenomenally surefooted performances from an astonishingly adept young cast, Times and Winds contrasts a parochial society's unending chain of cruelty with the pagan natural world's eternal and sensual beauty. Wise in its depiction of the cycle of life, and unblinking in its exploration of fate's capricious malice and childhood's discontent, Times and Winds' "vision of people in thrall to religious ritual and living at the mercy of nature may be poetic, but it is no idyll" (The New York Times).

2007 Turkey 111 min. Color Letterboxed (2.35:1)
Enhanced for 16x9 TVs
In Turkish with optional English subtitles
ATLANTIK FILM presents
A film by REHA ERDEM
TIMES AND WINDS (Bes¸ Vakit)
ÖZKAN ÖZEN ALI BEY KAYALI ELIT ISCAN
BÜLENT EMIN YARAR TANER BIRSEL YI—GIT ÖZSENER
Cinematography FLORENT HERRY
Sound HERVE GUYADER MURAT SENÜRKMEZ
Editing REHA ERDEM Original Score ARVO PART
Producer ÖMER ATAY
Written and Directed by REHA ERDEM
© 2006 ATLANTIK FILM YAPIM LTD.

Educational Reviews

"Almost a silent film for long stretches, the dramatic power here blossoms from the remarkable performances of the young unknown cast, who share calm companionable moments and face solitary terrors with the same equanimity." ***1/2 Highly Recommended Video Librarian

Critical Acclaim

"MAGNIFICENT...A humanist epic!" ­ Robert Koehler, LA Weekly

"****" ­ Jan Stuart, NEWSDAY

"A GORGEOUS DREAMSCAPE OF A FILM... perfectly shot, lyrical vignettes appropriate for a story told through the eyes of children on their dreamy, complicated way to becoming adults." ­ Sara Cardance, NEW YORK MAGAZINE

"BELONGS TO THE SAME SCHOOL OF PRIMAL HUMANISM AS SATYAJIT RAY AND KIAROSTAMI... the music of Estonian composer Arvo Part wafts through the film like a dry mountain breeze." ­ Stephen Holden, THE NEW YORK TIME

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