Motherland

The debuting director Senem Tüzen's drama about motherhood and modernity could be described as a Turkish Autumn Sonata. Ezra Bezen Bilgin is wonderful in the leading role as the newly divorced middle class woman Nesrin who leaves Istanbul to lick her wounds and write a book in her dead grandmother's old summerhouse far away in Anatolia. But the writing is interrupted when her mother comes to visit—and refuses to leave her alone. The conservative mother has views about most things that the modern urban woman has gotten used to, and the relationship becomes all the more strained. The house begins to feel like a prison for Nesrin, while the mother has a great time among the neighbors in this deeply religious area. (Göteborg Film Festival)