About Dry Grasses movie storyline. Samet (Deniz Celiloglu) is an art teacher in the fourth year of a posting to a remote school on the snowy East Anatolian steppes. It’s far from anywhere, and especially from Istanbul, as Samet will tell anyone who listens, whether his housemate and fellow teacher, Kenan (Musab Ekici), whose village background invites condescension from Samet, or Nuray (Merve Dizdar), a teacher at another school. She wears a prosthetic leg after a terrorist attack, and her faith in community, as opposed to Samet’s weary individualism, inspires an arresting encounter between the two.
About Dry Grasses (Turkish: Kuru Otlar Üstüne) is a 2023 Turkish-language drama film directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan and co-written by Ceylan, Ebru Ceylan, and Akın Aksu. Starring Deniz Celiloğlu, Merve Dizdar and Musab Ekici, it follows a teacher working in rural eastern Anatolia with hopes of moving to Istanbul when he is accused of abusing a student. The film premiered in the main competition section of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, where Dizdar won the Best Actress award.
About Dry Grasses was announced as one of nineteen films selected to compete for the Palme d’Or at the 76th Cannes Film Festival where it had its world premiere on May 19, 2023. The film was distributed in France by Memento Distribution on July 12, 2023 under the title Les herbes sèches.
It was also invited to the 27th Lima Film Festival in the Acclaimed section, where it was screened on 12 August 2023. Following screenings at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival and 2023 New York Film Festival. It is scheduled to be theatrically released in Turkey by Bir Film on September 29, 2023.
Film Review for About Dry Grasses
Anyone familiar with the Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Winter Sleep, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia) won’t be surprised to find that About Dry Grasses is a long-haul, knotty, talky examination of one man’s alienated relationship with the world around him. Equally unsurprising is how he’s self-regarding and brittle – the latest in a line of such Ceylan characters.
The catalyst to much of what unfolds over the endlessly snowy months of this story is Semet’s relationship with a young pupil, 14-year-old Sevim (Ece Bagci), who’s he fond of, even giving her a gift when he returns from the school holidays. She likes him, too, in a childish way – a schoolgirl’s affection towards a friendly authority figure. It’s not a shock, then, when Semet is accused by the school of unprofessional conduct after an anonymous tip-off. He denies it, and the accusation is soon squashed by the local authorities, causing Semet to turn on Sevim, who swaps affection for aggression.
The question of inappropriate behaviour is not the point of the film; it’s left as unresolved and complicated, and more a trigger for creating a fuller portrait of this man – in no way a monster but self-destructive and frustrated. Semet’s behaviour leaves much to be desired – but also to chew on, with Ceylan’s drama building layers of interest, one interaction, conversation, event at a time.
About Dry Grasses is as serious as you’d expect from Ceylan, but there’s also a self-reflective, playful angle to this one, and a seam of black humour that’s been missing from his recent films. The drama is occasionally punctuated by a series of startling still images of local people – presumably shot by Semet and suggesting he’s not solely inward-looking – and there’s one crashing-of-the-fourth-wall moment that’s alarming and daring. It’s a rich, challenging film, a blizzard of experience and ideas.
About Dry Grasses (2023)
Kuru Otlar Üstüne
Directed by: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Starring: Deniz Celiloğlu, Merve Dizdar, Musab Ekici, Ece Bağcı, Erdem Şenocak, Münir Can Cindoruk, Onur Berk Arslanoğlu, Elif Ürse, Elit Andaç, Nalan Kuruçim, Eylem Canpolat
Screenplay by: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Ebru Ceylan, Akın Aksu
Production Design by: Meral Aktan
Cinematography by: Kürşat Üresin, Cevahir Şahin
Film Editing by: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Oğuz Atabaş
Costume Design by: Gülsah Yüksel
Art Direction by: Meral Aktan
Music by: Philip Timofeyev
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Memento Distribution (France)
Release Date: May 2023 19, (Cannes), July 12, 2023 (France), September 29, 2023 (Turkey)
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