TIMES AND WINDS

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TIMES AND WINDS

BEŞ VAKİT

By Reha ERDEM

ATLANTIK FILM - as PROD

Drama - Completed 2006

- Year of production
- 2006
- Genres
- Drama
- Countries
- TURKEY
- Languages
- TURKISH
- Duration
- 111 mn
- Director(s)
- Reha ERDEM
- Writer(s)
- Reha ERDEM
- Cast
- Ali Bey KAYALI, Elit ISCAN, Özkan ÖZEN
- Producer(s)
- Ömer ATAY
- Synopsis
- Times and Winds is a finely etched portrait of remote village life in Turkey composed of small, meticulously observed moments of great beauty, melancholy and lyricism. Reha Erdem's latest feature is about the bumpy emotional lives of three preteen friends, Ömer (Özkan Özen), Yakup (Ali Bey Kayali) and Yildiz (Elit Iscan), and the ways their families curb their dreams and desires as surely as the mountains and the sea confine their isolated village.
  Ömer bitterly wishes for the death of his father, the local imam, who mistreats him in favour of his younger brother. Yakup is blithely in love with the teacher of their one-room schoolhouse, but his secret affections turn sour when he catches his father watching her as well. Finally, Yildiz's mother treats her like a household slave, and the girl becomes disturbed when she catches her parents making love. All three are burdened by feelings of insecurity and the apparent wickedness of the adults around them.
  Erdem has a profound and innately poetic sense of the rhythmic passing of time, with each day in the village divided into five by the calls to prayer. His film was shot on location in the village of Kozlu, with many of the residents appearing in speaking parts. Despite the arduous living conditions and the domestic indignities that the young ones endure, Times and Winds is not a depressing film, for within each heartbreak lies the potential for self-discovery and redemption. A glorious soundtrack by Arvo Pärt adds to the electrifying atmosphere.
  With a vast Scope frame, Erdem captures his troubled young protagonists posed against the sublime landscape, a deeply affecting motif that subtly conveys so much, so poignantly. Times and Winds is a small miracle: an intensely meditative film about young people's inner worlds.