The film that propelled Güney to worldwide acclaim, Yol follows the fates of five Kurdish prisoners on a weeklong furlough. Rather than liberation, their return home only offers a different kind of entrapment, especially for the women in their lives. Written while Güney was imprisoned (and directed by his longtime colleague Serif Goren under Güney's supervision), Yol is a film about the pecking order of oppression-political, religious, and sexual-as well as how those forms of oppression trickle down from national policy to village life and, finally, to the bedroom. At the 1982 Cannes Festival, Güney dramatically emerged from hiding to win the festival's Grand Prize for the film; his appearance made him an international celebrity, a cinematic Robin Hood. Turkey responded by declaring him persona non grata and forcing him into an exile from which he never returned.