When Turkish cinema began undergoing a revival in the mid-1990s, it was thanks to a handful of names that took a stalling cinema out of its stupor and raised the bar to an international scale. One of these names was director-writer Derviş Zaim who had wowed critics and audiences both domestically and internationally with his inspiring debut feature, Tabutta Rövaşata (Somersault in a Coffin). The story of the unforgettable antihero Mahsun, the homeless car thief, broke our hearts and went on to win four awards at Turkey’s Golden Orange Film Festival, including one for Best Film, as well as international awards in San Francisco, Thessaloniki and Turin.
Zaim is one of the few names in Turkish cinema who has established himself as a true auteur with six feature films since 1996. He is a master storyteller who doesn’t choose substance over style or style over substance since he blends both in what could be called a type of filmmaking that is uniquely his own. His incredible insight into the intricate dynamics of Turkey’s changing social structure and its history has given us some of the most powerful films on the people of Turkey and its recent history.
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