Distant

Winner of the 2003 Cannes Film Festival's Grand Prix, Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan skims along on a deceptively placid surface. Under this quiet, however, roil currents of guilt, familial obligations and abandonment. The film's title refers to both the relationship between jaded city dweller Mahmut (Muzaffer Ozdemir) and his distant relative, Yusuf (Mehmet Emin Toprak), and the connection Mahmut carefully maintains with the world around him. Years earlier, Mahmut arrived in Istanbul a penniless idealist, his heart filled with dreams of making films in the manner of Tarkovsky. A more disillusioned Mahmut now makes a very comfortable living as a commercial photog...