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 in prominent title cards. Before presenting it with the prize, jury president Wim Wenders commended the film for “[speaking] up very clearly about the political language of totalitarianism as opposed to the empathetic language cinema,” and declared it “a terrifying vision into the future.
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