Yusuf (Mehmet Emin Toprak) has lost his job in a factory, so he travels to Istanbul to find new employment. He stays with a relative of his, Mahmut (Muzaffer Özdemir), who has lived in Istanbul for a long time and so is different from Yusuf, who has just arrived from a village. Yusuf tries to find work, but doing so in Istanbul is more difficult than he anticipated, and he doesn’t get along well with Mahmut. Their cultural and educational differences show how distant they are from each other, even though they are relatives and come from the same village.
"The movie points at Turkey’s economic crisis during the late 90s and the huge amounts of unemployment during the early 2000s. People lost their jobs, emigration towards the big cities increased, and city people also suffered joblessness."
This is the typical villager story, about the dream of working in the big city. In Turkey, most big cities, like Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir, have ample job opportunities, and people migrate there not just from villages but also from other smaller cities, and when they move, they mostly stay with or near their relatives until employment is secured. This shows how family bonds are important to Turkish people. Even if they are not close relatives, the fact that they are relatives means that they must help each other. Mahmut gives Yusuf a room in his house and helps him with city life, but we can see that he does this only because they are relatives, since, at a deep level, he does not like this situation. The movie also points at Turkey’s economic crisis during the late 90s and the huge amounts of unemployment during the early 2000s. People lost their jobs, emigration towards the big cities increased, and city people also suffered joblessness.
Yusuf’s accent is quite different from Istanbul speech. He talks in an unfriendly and impolite way, and he finishes sentences with the word “Ya,” which doesn’t have any meaning in Turkish and makes the speaker sound ignorant. In some parts of the film, when Mahmut asks Yusuf about his job search, Yusuf answers: “Bugun, yarin” (Today, tomorrow). This proverb doesn’t literally mean “today or tomorrow,” as it’s closer to saying: “These days, this week, this month.” In another scene, Mahmut says “cart curt.” Neither word means anything in Turkish, but used together they denote “nonsense.” Throughout the movie, there are also some beautiful shots of Istanbul, especially of Istiklal Road, which is at the centre of Istanbul and is crowded all the time, and of Bebek Coast, where one can sit down and admire the beauty of the Bosphorus (or the Istanbul Strait), the Asian part of the city, and historical buildings such as Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. The star of the movie, Mehmet Emin Toprak, died in a car accident just after the movie was completed in 2002. He, along with Muzeffer Ozdemir, won the Best Actor award at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, while Uzak won the Jury Grand Prize at the same event, and was selected as Best Film at many international film festivals.
