Inspired by Dostoevsky, Ibsen, and especially Chekhov, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s slow-burning masterpiece of fear and self-loathing in Turkey justifiably won the Palme d’Or at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. 

Winter Sleep largely takes place in the Hotel Othello, which is set within a rocky outcrop in the stunning Cappadocia region of Anatolia. The owner is Aydin (Haluk Bilginer), a retired stage actor of some repute (“I prefer the term ‘thespian”), who considers himself to be an enlightened individual and an intellectual, writing a weekly opinion column on moral issues in the local paper. 

However, he is not as highly regarded his pretty, much younger wife Nihal (Melisa Sözen), who, growing restless in this provincial region, busies herself with charity work; nor by his recently divorced and more embittered sister Necla (Demet Akbağ), who joins him among the stone walls and underground rooms, all too aware that their lives seem already buried within them, and anxious for any spark to prove otherwise. 

Aydin is also a landlord, and he encounters friction with a local family, who have failed to pay their rent for many months. It is not that Aydin is a bad man so much as he has grown inured to suffering due to his own self-righteous complacency. As snow begins falling across the picturesque hills, tensions threaten to boil over within Aydin’s family and community, as the hotel turns into an inescapable place that fuels their animosities. 

Shot in the breathtakingly beautiful region of Cappadocia, home to bizarre rock formations, strange spires, and underground cave homes, Winter Sleep is a brilliantly scripted chamber drama touching upon themes of pride, isolation, and class discord, and provides a riveting journey, both social and psychological, into the Anatolian landscape. FACETS was the one of the first venues to theatrically show this masterpiece in the United States after it was acquired for distribution. 

Film selection and text written by Charles Coleman, FACETS Film Program Director.