Berdel

Yilmaz' powerful film starts with Hikmet the Supermarket, a travelling purveyor of essential goods to this rural clime of Turkey, shouting 'Quinine for men! Condoms for women!' Meanwhile, Hanim (Soray), wife to Ömer (Akan), is giving birth to her fifth girl - a disaster in this patriarchal community - and Ömer is wandering the coffee-houses in a terminal state of anxiety. He must have a boy. Nobody's happy, least of all Hanim's daughter Beyaz (Çayiroglu). It is she who will be forced to become the second wife of an older man so that her father may himself take a second wife and avoid the dowry - the custom of 'Berdel'. This moving and finely acted drama describes the tragic implications of these events with compassion, restraint and a close attention to detail; and in so doing, paints a forceful portrait of a society painfully entering the modern world.