In the riveting family drama “Yellow Letters,” German-born Turkish director İlker Çatak employs a culturally tilt-shifted backdrop for his tale of authoritarian crackdowns. The film announces, upfront via enormous on-screen text, that its setting is “Berlin as Ankara,” with the German capital standing in (sans disguise) for its Turkish equivalent, as though the film itself were in political exile. The result is a drama of surprising universality, in which a well-to-do couple becomes the target of unjust dismissals and persecution for political wrongthink against the Turkish regime. Çatak’s focus, all the while, remains on the intimate outcomes of this dynamic, and the way government mechanics are weaponized and inflicted in personal ways.
A tale of state theatrics, it fittingly begins on stage, as middle-aged actress Derya (Özgü Namal) concludes her opening night performance of an impassioned interpretive routine about resistance in the abstract. It’s penned by her playwright husband Aziz (Tansu Biçer), a university drama professor who congratulates her from the wings as she takes her curtain call before an adoring crowd.
Something, however, is amiss. A phone goes off in the audience, as Derya’s gaze meets that of an older gentleman in the crowd — a character one might assume will go on to be of greater importance. This man ends up with no more screen time than these fleeting seconds, but his presence continues to loom large over the movie’s 127 minutes: He’s a key government official who’s merely shown up for a photo op, and he turns out to be instrumental in getting Derya’s play cancelled, and in getting Aziz and his fellow faculty suspended indefinitely for their posts on social media.
Before the couple receives their yellow letters — official envelopes containing German government communication, in this case legal action — the film is exacting in its introduction of both its characters and their remixed setting. Derya and Aziz have a pleasant relationship with their teenage daughter Ezgi (Leyla Smyrna Cabas) and they deliver quickfire, casual dialogue that Çatak captures with a naturalistic touch, especially in group settings as their world implodes.
The streets outside their window are populated by youthful demonstrations which, although they feature occasionally non-specific protest signs about stopping “the war,” are also littered with enough specificities to tether the film to the ostensible present, via the appearance of Queer Pride colors, and the flags of Palestine and Ukraine.
“Yellow Letters” is thus an issues movie that, in theory, runs the risk of excess abstraction and turning into the infamous Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad. However, it gestures frequently enough at reality to remain grounded in contemporary political concerns. In fact, that it’s in competition at this year’s Berlinale makes it all the more relevant, even if by accident. It premieres a day after jury president Wim Wenders received pushback for avoiding questions about Israel and Palestine at the festival’s press conference, where he said that “movies can change the world,” but “not in a political way.”
This is a dilemma on Çatak’s mind as well, as the dismissal of his leading couple threads similar conversations about whether what they do artistically (or what they seek to do in experimental theatre, after being made persona non grata) is enough to make a practical impact.
However, as Aziz says to his drama students while encouraging them to participate in the protests: “If you haven’t seen the state’s theatrics, then I can tell you nothing about dramaturgy.” As much as the characters might be forced to languish in limbo for speaking out — and as much as they might begin to doubt their own commitments, and start to consider compromising — “Yellow Letters” itself is nothing if not committed to the idea that political art remains a vital tool against authority.
It also embodies this idea through the absurdity of its geographically impossible setting, where all its Turkish-speaking characters discuss Turkish politics, but are surrounded by buildings adorned with German-language slogans, and they experience the kind of fraught political fallout one might experience in any city in today’s rightward-shifting world, be it Berlin or Budapest or Minneapolis or Mumbai.
Before long, Derya, Aziz and Ezgi end up moving to Istanbul — which is to say, “Hamburg as Istanbul” — to move in with Aziz’s mother (İpek Bilgin), an indignity foisted upon them by the state as Aziz awaits his trial. Being out of work, and packed together like sardines, ends up causing numerous interpersonal fractures, as the pressure between them builds, eventually yielding mistrust as they struggle to make ends meet, and to continue to be heard. Although the film is about political mechanics, it’s equally (if not more so) about the trickle-down effect of political persecution, and the way it frays both the family unit as well as one’s social relationships.
As Derya and Aziz’s hypocrisies, as upper-class intellectuals, are increasingly brought to the fore, Namal and Biçer’s conversational performances grow haggard and strained. Çatak and cinematographer Judith Kaufmann begin capturing both actors through glass, their refracted images emblematic of personal and interpersonal schisms. The camera’s gradual movement embodies festering paranoia, as the heavy strings by composer Marvin Miller break through lengthy, silent stretches in order to highlight dramatic peaks and valleys. These musical crescendos are practically chapter titles, offering opportunities for sobering reflection.
For a film to have a lucid political outlook (even through a kind of “Star Wars”-ification of its particulars) is one thing. For it to remain emotionally piercing and artistically convincing is another thing entirely, but “Yellow Letters” strikes this balance with deceptive simplicity. At its core is the kind of cinema that has long sustained the medium at large: the family drama. But it’s presented here with invigorating flourishes that encircle the story within specific moments in time, while also granting it a stirring dramatic transcendence. The scope of its ambition is met, at every turn, by deft control over what is witnessed, and how.
English (US) ·