Turkish director Zeki Demirkubuz taps into his country’s zeitgeist with contemporary drama Life (Hayat), starring Miray Daner as a young woman who runs away to Istanbul to escape an arranged marriage but still struggles to break free of male domination.
Her jilted fiancé Riza (Burak Dakak) ruminates on the rejection and heads to the city in a bid to track her down. Their paths criss-cross, but it is not certain they ever will connect.
“The whole story began 35 years ago during an Anatolian trip to a small border town, when I had a 15-minute interaction with a young woman who was managing something like a bodega,” Demirkubuz told a Deadline Contenders International panel.
“This is the power of cinema,” he added. “That little interaction I had with her grew into the story you just mentioned — a young woman trying to live out her dreams in a society dominated by male figures such as a lover, a father, a fiancée, a husband.”
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Demirkubuz said the film is a reflection on the continuing difficult position of some women in Turkish society.
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“As a gender, women have to endure such difficult, violent and sometimes unbelievable things,” he said. “Of course, it’s not the same for every woman in the country, but there are some women who go through this.”
Daner and Dakak hail from the buzzy Turkish series scene, with recent credits including Netflix’s As the Crow Flies and Inheritance Days, respectively. Explaining his casting process, Demirkubuz said he initially was drawn to both actors for their faces.
“I don’t care about these things [such as] who comes from theater,[whether they’re] non-actor, actor, from the street, someone I just run across,” he said. “At the forefront of everything, I look for a face — that can represent everything that I’m trying to tell in the story. I am very open. I go everywhere. I talk to everyone.”
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Dakak says he jumped at the chance to work with Demirkubuz and spent three months preparing for the role.
“He was my favorite director before I met him. It was a good journey,” said the actor, who puts his character’s motivation down to instinct. “It’s a human instinct. He saw her once and he felt something … and he doesn’t accept that she has gone away.”
Check back Monday for the panel video.
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