Through the night, three cars carry a small group of men police officers, a doctor, a prosecutor, grave diggers, gendarmerie forces, and two brothers, homicide suspects around in the rural surroundings of the Anatolian town Keskin, in search of a buried body. Kenan, one of the suspects, leads them from one water fountain to another; at the time of the crime he was intoxicated and he cannot recall where he and his mentally challenged brother buried the body. The darkness and visual indistinctness of the landscape do not help; each spot looks the same as the others.
Meanwhile the men discuss a variety of topics, such as yoghurt, lamb chops, urination, family, spouses, ex-wives, death, suicide, hierarchy, bureaucracy, ethics, and their jobs. Before dawn the prosecutor gets hungry, and the group stops at a nearby village to eat. After the meal Kenan reveals what happened the night of the killing while drunk he let slip the secret that the victim’s son was actually his, and then things got ugly.
Daylight breaks. The body is found and taken to the local hospital for autopsy. The mother and son (perhaps 12 years old) are waiting outside the hospital. The son throws a stone at Kenan hitting him between the eyes. Kenan cries.
The prosecutor invites the victim’s wife to identify the body in the hospital morgue, files the necessary paperwork, and departs, leaving the doctor to perform the autopsy. The autopsy reveals the presence of soil in the lungs, implying that the victim had been buried alive, but the doctor intentionally omits that from the report. This may allow the offenders to get away with lesser charges, but it will also spare the victim’s wife and stepson from further grief.
The movie ends with a shot from the doctor’s perspective of the mother and son in the distance walking away with the husband’s belongings. The son sees that a soccer ball has been accidentally kicked far from a schoolyard and he runs and retrieves it and kicks it back to the children in the yard. He then runs back to his mother.
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Turkish: Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da) is a 2011 internationally co-produced drama film, co-written and directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan based on the true experience of one of the film’s writers, telling the story of a group of men who search for a dead body on the Anatolian steppe. The film, which went on nationwide general release across Turkey on September 23, 2011, premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival where it was a co-winner of the Grand Prix.
Once Upon A Time in Anatolia (2012)
Directed by: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Starring: Muhammet Uzuner, Yılmaz Erdoğan, Taner Birsel, Ahmet Mümtaz Taylan, Fırat Tanış, Ercan Kesal, Şafak Karalı, Nihan Okutucu, Cansu Demirci, Kubilay Tunçer, Uğur Aslanoğlu
Screenplay by: Ercan Kesal, Ebru Ceylan
Cinematography by: Gökhan Tiryaki
Film Editing by: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Bora Gökşingöl
Costume Design by: Özlem Batur, Meral Efe Yurtseven, Nildağ Kılıç
Art Direction by: Dilek Yapkuöz Ayaztuna
Distributed by: Strand Releasing
Release Date: January 4, 2012
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