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2016 ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE FOR BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Early summer in a village in Northern Turkey. Five free-spirited teenaged sisters splash about on the beach with their male classmates. Though their games are merely innocent fun, a neighbor passes by and reports what she considers to be illicit behavior to the girls’ family. The family overreacts, removing all “instruments of corruption,” like cell phones and computers, and essentially imprisoning the girls, subjecting them to endless lessons in housework in preparation for them to become brides. As the eldest sisters are married off, the younger ones bond together to avoid the same fate. The fierce love between them empowers them to rebel and chase a future where they can determine their own lives in Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s debut, a powerful portrait of female empowerment.
"[Mustang] speaks a touching international language of frustrated youth that anyone can understand." - Star Tribune
"Simultaneously alarming and loads of tart-tongued fun." - TheWrap
"Confirms that sensitive, humanist, deeply immersive filmmaking remains alive and well in a world bursting with vital stories and indelible characters." - Washington Post
"A tender and fresh coming-of-age film that honors the bonds of womanhood and sisterhood without taking them for granted." - The Atlantic
"Outrage and empathy spill over the sides of the movie to embrace the planet as a whole." - Boston Globe
"Pulls off a very tricky balancing act between bemoaning its characters’ fate and celebrating their resilience." - The A.V. Club
DIRECTOR BIOGRAPHY
Born in Ankara in 1978, Deniz Gamze Ergüven had a very cosmopolitan upbringing, between France, Turkey and the United States. A compulsive cinephile, she studied directing at La Fémis in Paris, after a BA in literature and an MA in African History at Johannesburg. Her graduation film, Bir Damla Su (Unegoutted'eau), screened at the Cannes Festival Cinéfondation and won a Leopards of Tomorrow award at the Locarno Festival. Opening with a shot of a veiled woman blowing a bubble with chewing gum, the 19-minute short tells the story of a young Turkish woman (played by Deniz herself) rebelling against the patriarchal attitudes and authoritarianism of the men in her community.
After graduating from La Fémis, Denis Gamze Ergüven developed a debut feature set in South Central, Los Angeles, during the 1992 riots. Titled Kings, the project was selected by Emergence, the Cinéfondation Workshop and Sundance Screenwriters Lab. it was set to one side in favor of Mustang, co-written with Alice Winocour in the summer of 2012.
The story of an emancipation, Mustang is a powerful, female take on contemporary Turkey. Deniz Gamze Ergüven shot it around Inebolu in northern Turkey, 600 kilometers from Istanbul.