Winter Sleep

Inspired by Dostoevsky, Ibsen, and especially Chekhov, Ceylan’s slow-burning masterpiece of fear and self-loathing in Turkey won the Palme d’Or at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. Shot in the breathtakingly beautiful region of Cappadocia, home to bizarre rock formations, strange spires, and underground cave homes, Winter Sleep follows an overly contented former actor (“I prefer the term ‘thespian’”) now returned home to operate his family’s inn. His beautiful, much younger wife and older, more embittered sister join him among the stone walls and underground rooms, all too aware that their lives seem already buried within them, and anxious for any spark to prove otherwise. Taking refuge in either dreams or spite (“I wish my threshold of self-deception was as low as yours,” is one particularly withering bon mot), their boredom ends only briefly when faced with true problems, like those of a tenant family nearby. The winter, however, always waits. “Our infallible fate is to be deceived in everything we attempt. I make brilliant plans in the morning, then fool around all day,” our hero concludes in one fitting scene, before vomiting. “The film is a tour de force of writing, acting, and subtly meticulous mise-en-scéne,” writes Geoff Andrew of Sight & Sound. Reminiscent of Bergman’s chamber pieces, Winter Sleep is “filmmaking of the first order” (London Film Festival).