Raise Your Body to the Sun!

Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s debut feature Mustang (2015) is a coming-of-age love story intertwining the fate of five sisters on the cusp of womanhood who live in a tiny village on the edge of the Black Sea – far away from the more cosmopolitan Istanbul. Mustang is above all a film about Turkey and its schizophrenic nature – a country caught between traditionalism and modernity; at the same time, the film is also political, having very noticeable feminist undercurrents. Despite its fairytale narrative, it shines a light on women’s issues, revealing them in all their sombre dimensions. It does not take much for them to grow into life-threatening proportions.

The integral (Slovenian) version of this article can be found in the printed KINO!