The Wild Pear Tree
[Ahlat Ağacı], directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey/France 2018, 188'
The protagonist of The Wild Pear Tree—Sinan, a graduate of pedagogy—returns to his hometown Çan, located in northwestern Turkey, before his last exams. As a stranger from a larger city, he looks at everyone and everything in his hometown with distaste, but also with forbearance at the provincial community that he left years ago. However, life in Çan gradually draws him in deeper and deeper, and his dreams of success and the ideal career are proving difficult to materialize. The film, saturated with the colors of the changing seasons, is an insightful portrait of a multi-generational family in which nightmares are intertwined with philosophical disputes about the Koran.
