Introduction

This chapter presents Ceylan through his films, starting with his directorial debut Koza/Cocoon (1995), first feature Kasaba/The Small Town (1997), second, Mayıs Sıkıntısı/Clouds of May (1999), third, Uzak/Distant (2002), fourth, İklimler/Climates (2006), as a tetralogy defined by the author as ‘A Portrait of the Provincial Artist as an Urban Intellectual’; Üç Maymun/Three Monkeys (2008) shifting the focus from the individual to the nuclear family, Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da/Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) widening the screen to cinemascope while widening its scope to encompass the country and its historical and socio-political landscape, Kış Uykusu/Winter Sleep returning to the microcosm while reviving the ‘Provincial Artist as an Urban Intellectual’ motif and finally, Ahlat Ağacı/The Wild Pear Tree reverting to Ceylan’s father-son occupation through anti-heroes. Reflecting on each film, the chapter highlights their interconnectedness-common themes (solitude, nostalgia, lack of communication, father-son, ‘distant’ gaze of the urban intellectual); existential sadness and traumas of liminality in characters from traditional societies; transitory spaces; motifs of claustrophobia, absence, innocence and its loss, dishonesty (and dishonesty as the essence of cinema) and influences-Tarkovsky, Kiarostami, Ozu and Chekhov. Ceylan’s special style of turning to the local and familiar to reach the global (hence building a global audience) is the running thread through the chapter.