In the end, political cinema won out. At the closing ceremony of a Berlin Film Festival blighted by controversy and discourse over the political responsibilities or otherwise of art, German-Turkish filmmaker İlker Çatak lifted the Golden Bear for his bold, statement-making film “Yellow Letters,” a portrait of a married playwright and actress in contemporary Turkey who find themselves targeted by the state for their particular brand of protest theater.
It’s a stirring film with a compelling formal twist: Though it’s set entirely in Turkey, it was shot entirely — and without disguise — in Çatak’s home country of Germany, with major cities credited as “playing” their Turkish counterparts
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