Gulyabani

Synopsis

Gulyabani is an entity, a ghoul, an outsider. She’s the restless spirit of a desolate and lonely place. Fethiye Sessiz, a notorious clairvoyant from Izmir in 1970s and 1980s, remembers fractions of her survival from abuse, kidnappings and violence. Recounting the events of her childhood through her diary and letters to her estranged son, Gulyabani recollects the emotional landscape in the most violent period of post-Republic Turkey, where the memory of the future and fragments of the past come together at once.

Director Biography

Gürcan KELTEK (1973, Turkey) studied Film at Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi, faculty of Fine Arts. His short film Overtime (2012) was selected at several festivals, including Vision Du Réel and DOK Leipzig. He then made a medium-length film, Colony (2015), which premiered at FiDMarseille. Keltek’s first feature film Meteorlar/Meteors (2017) had its world premiere at the film festival of Locarno. The experimental Turkish-Dutch co-production blends together elements of documentary and fiction, and is a reaction to the political situation in the Kurdish region in Anatolia. The short Gulyabani (2018) premiered at Locarno.