Sunday, April 15

Sideway from “National Competition” was screened at Atlas Sineması with the participation of the director Tayfun Pirselimoğlu and the film crew. On the things that he wants to point out to in the film, the director said that it is full of allegories but that he doesn’t think it’s right to explain them: “The audience always understands something depending on their disposition. What you make of it is certainly different than what we understand; I wouldn’t like to spoil it.” Then he added: “What the film wants to say and my hope is that we’re headed somewhere bad. The course of events points out to somewhere bad, not only for us but for the entire world. But I think the doomsday is also a sign of something good because it is not possible to start anew without hitting the end. We always say that there is no bottom to it but we just don’t know where it is. We can only return to the beginning by heading for the end first. There’s a hope for a new beginning in the film.”

Pirselimoğlu also answered a question about the visual aesthetics of the film: “I don’t like a camera that jumps around, bounces or dances. A simpler visual quality in cinema is what I’m after”. He also said that the film is set somewhere that looks far but is not: “It is not a story on the main road; we’re taking the sideway.”

Photo: Benek Özmez