Umut Sakallıoğlu

Saroyanland is a docu-drama focusing on the journey of famous writer William Saroyan to the birthplace of his Armenian family Bitlis, in Turkey in 1964. While retaking the same road, the film aims to understand Saroyan's unique attitude to belonging, witnessing the self-discovery of a man who followed the traces of his Armenian ancestors.

Ali is someone who suffered great destructions in his life when he was only seven years old. His mother’s death by falling into well and murder of his father by Ihsan had inflicted deep wounds on him. Ali goes to kill Ihsan and Ihsan makes an unusual offer to this unexpected guest. He asks for seven days. Life, conscience, pressures, friendship, masculinity, and regrets are questioned in these seven days they spend together.

Ishak, a wandering musician from a small mountain town. A lynching he was a part of 7 years ago comes back to haunt him as he returns to his town to say farewell to his dying mother. Facing the other five perpetrators--his childhood friends—as well as the community and government officials supporting them, Ishak struggles with the guilt weighing upon him. However, the bigger the crime is, the stronger the silence gets since everyone has blood on their hands.

Mehmet is a man living with his family in a mountain village in the Black Sea region. He earns his living by breeding a few animals, while passionately looking for a mineral reserve on the mountains, but his pursuit is seen useless by his family. Devastated by vain efforts, his hope is renewed with a competition. Mehmet will attend the bull fight held in Artvin, but he returns from Artvin completely lost, once again. This simple story pictures the naive portrait of a touching life, a life struggle in hardship and the relationship between nature, animals and human beings.

Sumru, a young ethnomusicologist in search of her lost lover, leaves Istanbul for a three-month research project in Diyarbakır. While crossing paths with locals and tracing the pains of others through a music project based on Anatolian mournings, she comes to confront the remnants of her own agony.

Mustafa, who works at a public institute in Istanbul, is considered to be an unpleasant person who never smiles. He finds himself in an awkward situation when he visits his father at the hospital. He is given his father’s leg and told to bury it to fulfill a religious custom.

Whenever his plectrum strums the strings of his saz, folk bard Necdet is drifting into strange and wondrous cosmic realms. For years, he has been estranged from his son Metin, a psychedelic rock musician. One day, Shaman Ana — walking across centuries — suddenly appears, determined to reconcile them.

Murat, who has just been imprisoned, asks for a request to his wife Sema, which is against the procedures. Sema cannot stand her husband's pressure and tries to get Murat's request into the prison by illegal means. But the prison has excessive precautions.

Twelve-year-old Trabzon Rum, Paris, escapes from the camp to get the gift that his father carved for his mother. When he returns, he sees that the exchange is sent and the camp is evacuated. The new regime declared Major Osman a traitor, arrested and closed the camp, which was evacuated from the exchanges. This twilight, in which roots and loyalty are questioned, will be the homeland of both until new ships arrive.

Maryam, an immigrant living in the US returns to her small village in Azerbaijan after discovering that her father is alive and residing in a psychiatric facility. She tries to help recover his mind with her memories but the struggle against the disease turns into a fight with her own conscience.

Having recently returned from compulsory military service, Emrah, who lives with his mother, refuses to socialise, and strolls alone on highways. He hides two letters in a drawer: one that he has written when he was in the army to his former lover, Sevgi, and another that he has found by the side of the dead body of a guerrilla whose life he has taken. Following the address on the letter, Emrah reaches the house of Zeynep, the guerrilla’s lover, and leaves the letter there. But this will not relieve his nightmares. With the help of his uncle, he finds a job as a night watch. Forced to spend the whole night in a small room, Emrah will go through troubled times and the nightmares will become all the worse leading into ever more confusion.

At the center of a barren and mysterious universe stands a shed. From within, the Leader oversees his subordinates, but they cannot look inside. After an encounter with one of his subordinates, the Leader faces the fact that his authority is crumbling. In order to regain his authority, he decides to use brute force, but nevertheless the battle for authority persists.

This is an adventurous and ambitious director's story who tries to make a film in the conditions of Turkey. After the making of the film, it followed by censorship, suppression and banning... For what purpose, for what kind of reasons, for whom and why can a film be prohibited?

1916. As the Russian invasion threatens Trabzon, Zeynep and Safiye set out west, taking Zeynep's four-year-old son, Haşim, with them. However, young Haşim succumbs to the brutal conditions of the journey and dies. Zeynep, unable to bear the thought of burying him in the depths of an unknown forest, changes her path to find a suitable village cemetery.