Director, writer and actor Yilmaz Guney--who is living and working in exile in France--has acquired an international reputation as the most important filmmaker to emerge from the modern Turkish cinema with such films as The Herd and Hope (as yet unavailable in this country) and the recent film, Yol. His films are epics of injustice and suffering for which the term "happy ending" has no relevance. The raw immediacy of their images often seems to be ironic in contrast with the polished quality of Guney's color photography, as is the case with the 1971 feature, Baba. Baba (The Father) is the story of a desperately poor boatman who is waiting to emigrate to Germany in order to find work to support his family. When his landlord's son commits a murder, The Father agrees to answer for the deed in exchange for the landlord's promise to support his family. For him, jail or Germany both equal exile. Guney's detailed photographic portrait of the prison milieu sets the framework of dramatic tragedy: after twenty-four years of hard labor, The Father discovers that his sacrifice has been in vain. His daughter is a prostitute, and his son is a henchman for the murderer himself.