Cinema Releases - Once upon a Time in Anatolia

FILM OF THE WEEK

“Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is a carefully controlled masterpiece…We realise we’ve been watching a thriller as challenging as Antonioni’s BLOW-UP and Haneke’s HIDDEN…

“One of the most significant moviemakers to have emerged this century, an original figure in his own right and a major force in reviving a belief in the kind of serious, ambitious, morally concerned European arthouse cinema that was taken to new heights by Bergman, Tarkovsky, Antonioni and Angelopoulos in the 60’s and 70’s”

Philip French,THE OBSERVER review

★★★★★

“The latest masterwork from director Nuri Bilge Ceylan”

Mike McCahill, THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

★★★★★

“Ceylan’s rural crime drama is so engrossing and proceeds with a powerful sense of purpose”

Nicholas Barber ,THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY review

★★★★

Jonathan Dean, THE SUNDAY TIMES

“Quite special…A crime story, but much, much more…a compelling poignant picture…visually it’s a stunner with majestic cinematography”

Angie Errigo, THE MAIL ON SUNDAY

“Utterly absorbing…consolidates the status of  Ceylan as one of today’s great directors – an artist whose unapologetic seriousness, tempered by a mischievous wit, makes him as close as we now have to a Bergman or a Tarkovsky”

Jonathan Romney, THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

★★★★★

“Murder mysteries rarely run so deep…this compelling, masterly journey.”

Dave Calhoun, TIME OUT review

★★★★★

“Pure, exhilarating mastery…made with such confidence and flair…possessed of a mysterious grandeur”

“It is a kind of masterpiece: audacious, uncompromising and possessed of a mysterious grandeur…this has something of Antonioni, or Chekhov or even the later stories of Tolstoy”

“Ceylan displays pure, exhilarating, masterly”

“With his two early features, DISTANT and CLIMATES, Ceylan has showed himself a superb filmmaker.  This is his greatest so far”

Peter Bradshaw, THE GUARDIAN review

★★★★★

“Cinema of utter, purest sorcery”

“If you’re in a hurry, don’t go near this film.  If you’re not…don’t go anywhere else.  It could change your life…cinema of utter, purest sorcery…

Nigel Andrews, THE FINANCIAL TIMES review

★★★★★

“Completely gripping…Ceylan’s astonishing crime procedural”

Anthony Quinn, THE INDEPENDENT

“Enthralling”
Wendy Ide, THE TIMES

”The rewards are a rich, subtle tale that seems to glimpse into the soul of a nation."

“Heavy with menace, melancholy and mystery…beautifully shot and mesmerising”

Allan Hunter, THE DAILY EXPRESS

★★★★

“Epic Turkish police procedures set all over the Anatolian steeps are few and far between, as are films with photography”

“This is amazing…Ceylan shoots here with grander ambition than ever before…Arduous and mesmerising, his movie intrigues almost more in retrospect…a remarkable ending sneaks up and stuns you”

Tim Robey, THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

No. 1 CRITICS' CHOICE, TIME OUT

"For me it was the only Masterpiece in the Cannes competition"

"A crime movie but not as you know it...Ceylan is  daring screen artist of the highest order"

Dave Calhoun, TIME OUT

“Ceylan’s poetic, enquiring work…his extraordinary new film.”

Read Dave Calhoun's interview with Nuri Bilge Ceylan in  TIME OUT

“Audacious...Groundbreaking...Wholly engrossing...Meticulously constructed...Elegantly composed...Exquisitely atmospheric...Ceylan’s idiosyncratic and magnificent variation on the policier…the most remarkable of the director’s six features to date….it was also the finest film in Cannes – and for this writer, the greatest of last year.”

Geoff Andrew, Sight & Sound

Adam Woodward, (Interview) LITTLE WHITE LIES

★★★★★

"Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is not only a superb film in its own right - sitting proudly amongst the best of Ceylan's substantial body of work - but is also a contender for film of the year so far."

Read Daniel Green, Cine-vue

“Ceylan’s hypnotic metaphysical noir…towering, tough and very, very pretty”

“Ceylan’s sixth, and greatest, feature…“...each shot is captured with the precision of an old master”

“Recalling nothing less than Antonioni’s modernist 1955 man-hunt, L’Aventura…here is a film that locates new aesthetic possibilities for the mundane… the ‘action’ enveloped in some of the most bewitching, ethereal cinematography your likely to see projected on to a canvas screen this year.”

David Jenkins, LITTLE WHITE LIES

"It is a brilliant, masterly film with a distinctive force and artistic gravitas. This, too, could quite easily have won the Palme D'Or: I think it is Ceylan's best yet.(...) "
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

“Magical filmmaking, set quite firmly in the all too real world”

Wally Hammond, Sight & Sound

“The current darling of the film festival circuit… Don't miss”

Charlotte Philby, The Independent

“Austerely beautiful”

Read Stuart Jeffries' interview in  The Guardian

“Beautifully lit widescreen images of lived-in faces and barren, beautiful landscapes”

Tom Dawson, Total Film

★★★★

“Subtle brilliance…Ceylan confirms his reputation as a cinematic master”

David Parkinson, Empire

Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

'Visually, it's as gorgeous a film as Ceylan has made (...) rarely have faces been more beautifully illuminated by firelight, in images that have the graceful glow of a Vermeer painting.'
Justin Chang, Variety

‘...fascinating, not only on a personal level, but also as a profoundly perceptive portrait of the Turkish multi-leveled culture and society.’

Dan Fainaru, Screen International

‘...an impressive, bleakly comic epistemological treatment of a police investigation conducted in the dark emptiness of the Anatolian night.’

Jim Hoberman, Village Voice

“Magical filmmaking, set quite firmly in the all too real world”

Wally Hammond, Sight & Sound

“The current darling of the film festival circuit… Don't miss”

Charlotte Philby, The Independent

“Austerely beautiful”
Stuart Jeffries, (Interview) The Guardian

“Audacious...Groundbreaking...Wholly engrossing...Meticulously constructed...Elegantly composed...Exquisitely atmospheric...Ceylan’s idiosyncratic and magnificent variation on the policier…the most remarkable of the director’s six features to date….it was also the finest film in Cannes – and for this writer, the greatest of last year.”

Geoff Andrew, Sight & Sound

★★★★

“Beautifully lit widescreen images of lived-in faces and barren, beautiful landscapes”

Tom Dawson, Total Film

“Subtle brilliance…Ceylan confirms his reputation as a cinematic master”

David Parkinson, Empire

“Ceylan is considered one of Turkey’s foremost contemporary cine luminaries, however it’s a mantle he’s earned in the face of years of adversity.”

Adam Woodward's  interview with Nuri Bilge Ceylan in Little White Lies

★★★★★

“Ceylan’s hypnotic metaphysical noir…towering, tough and very, very pretty...each shot is captured with the precision of an old master... Recalling nothing less than Antonioni’s modernist 1955 man-hunt, L’Aventura…here is a film that locates new aesthetic possibilities for the mundane… the ‘action’ enveloped in some of the most bewitching, ethereal cinematography your likely to see projected on to a canvas screen this year.”
David Jenkins, Little White Lies

★★★★

“What extraordinary eyes and ears has the Turkish photographer and director Nuri Bilge Ceylan.  Eyes that (via cinematographer Gökhan Tiryaki transform the most workaday vistas into lustrous dreamscapes; ears that find the hidden absurdities and profundities in everyday exchanges.”

Hannah McGill, The List

“An impeccably beautiful representation of the everyday”

J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

“A Mesmerizing Police Procedural”

Erik Kohn, IndiWire

“Gorgeous to look at, intriguing to think about”

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News

“Takes the unassuming form of a police investigation that, as miles and words mount, evolves into a plangent, visually stunning meditation on what it is to be human.”

Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“A subtle, gorgeous and mysterious allegory that may be Ceylan's masterwork to date.”

“Once upon a time is a cop movie and a road movie – but mostly it’s gorgeous cinema”

Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com

“A creeping nocturnal examination of ethics and manipulation in the guise of a police-procedural. Cinematic craftsmanship of the highest order.”

Matthew Thrift, Sight & Sound (Film Highlights of the year 2011)

“The film that should have won Cannes. More than anyone in film today, Ceylan is a novelist of images, and this is his deepest, starkest offering yet. Few films so urgently demand the viewer’s active involvement right from the start: Anatolia plunges us instantly into murky business in the thick of night. The audacity of a crime story that literally keeps you in the dark for a long time before you even know what the crime is.”

Jonathan Romney, Sight & Sound

"A deep and haunting work that lingers in the memory."

Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter

“Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is, in a word, great.”

Stephen Holden, The New York Times