Antalya: Turkish Director Mehmet Can Mertoğlu on ‘Album’, His Scathing Standout Debut
ANTALYA, Turkey — A middle-class Turkish couple struggling to have a child decides to adopt, kicking off an elaborate scheme to sidestep the judgment of family and friends by staging photos of a pregnancy that never took place.
Mehmet Can Mertoğlu’s debut feature, “Albüm” (Album), is stocked with barbed takes on the world they inhabit, where listless bureaucrats snooze their way toward meager pensions and the film’s parents-to-be treat the job of picking out their newborn with all the passion and excitement of a couple choosing a carpet for the living room.
It is not a film that’s likely to gain many admirers at the Turkish tourism board, yet Mertoğlu argues it’s a fair – if at times over-the-top – depiction of his country today. And he certainly has won his share of fans for a film that arrived at the Antalya Int’l. Film Festival this week, trailing a string of awards and critical laurels.
“Up until now, the response is better than expectations,” he says.
In its black humor and dry social commentary in the face of bureaucratic ineptitude, critics have seen the Romanian New Wave’s fingerprints all over “Album,” recalling the works of Cristi Puiu and Corneliu Porumboiu. Mertoğlu says it’s no coincidence: not only does the helmer count the Romanians among his influences, but he brought in Porumboiu’s acclaimed cinematographer, Marius Panduru, to lens “Album.”
Panduru came on board in the early stages of production, giving the film its particularly austere, deadpan aesthetic. Romanian Golden Bear winner Calin Peter Netzer (“Child’s Pose”) is also listed among the production credits, along with Oscar-winning Bosnian helmer Denis Tanovic (“No Man’s Land”) as part of a Turkey-Romania-France-Germany co-prod.
The film arrives in Antalya on the heels of a Cannes Critics’ Week premiere, where it won the France 4 Visionary Award, before scooping best film honors at the Sarajevo Film Festival. Returning to Turkey it played to local auds in Istanbul and at the Adana film fest, where it won three awards, including best director and best screenplay.
Despite the accolades, Mertoğlu says the film has gotten a mixed reception back home, with some viewers feeling that his barbed commentary on contemporary Turkey paints his countrymen in a particularly harsh and unflattering light.
But the helmer expected to provoke strong reactions through satire, a form which he acknowledges is “really rare in Turkish arthouse cinema.” Undoubtedly some local auds will welcome a fresh take that breaks from the country’s more dominant, brooding mold. When one cast member after a recent screening in Antalya said the film “mirrored the black comedy of Turkey today,” he received sustained applause.
Laughter is one way to deal with recent events in Turkey, which has been hit this year by a string of terrorist attacks, a failed coup attempt, and the ongoing fallout of the war in neighboring Syria.
Even Mertoğlu has been unsettled by the headlines, admitting to jitters when he visits movie theaters. He notes, too, that the uncertainty is taking a toll on the Turkish industry, stalling a number of films currently in production, and raising questions about the next government funding cycle.
Still, the helmer hopes such setbacks won’t stall the momentum of an industry that has been growing in size and critical acclaim in recent years.
“The next year will be hard,” he says. “But…it won’t last forever.”
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