Yılmaz Çintan

Van Lake Monster looks at today's human condition with a critical and ironic eye. The film argues for the coexistence of differences, through the openness that life offers to all living things.

In a village where tradition and modernity; material and spiritual goes hand in hand, Ali is the last representative of the tradition in which the fish is regarded highly sacred, and when they die, they are buried with prayers in a special cemetery allocated for them.

Before the Night portrays ordinary life under the enduring state of emergency, from the perspective of its three characters. Gulbîn, a painter living with her parents, is trying to make her own way in life, while obsessively painting a portrait of her mum with inspiration from Whistler's painting Mother. The mother models for her daughter while trying to insulate her house from the noise of the bombs to no avail. The father, whose health is deteriorating, tries to reimagine his war-stricken city with old photographs he took.

A refugee couple with a baby walks out of the sea, wailing in anguish. The mother of the child realises that the baby has died, or so it seems…