Promoting her award-winning docu-fiction at the 53rd London Film Festival, where her film is featured alongside two other Turkish titles in the Cinema Europa program, Özge told the Anatolia news agency on Monday that showings of her film have been fully booked.The writer-director-producer said she believes that the fact that the stories she tells in her film are rooted in reality has helped increase audience interest in the film.
A review of “Men on the Bridge” by Geoff Andrew, published in Timeout magazine, praised the film as “a portrait of life in the rapidly changing sprawl of today's İstanbul, offering resonant and affecting insights in a pacy, punchy, multi-strand narrative,” also hailing the acting performances of the film's non-professional cast.
“Men on the Bridge,” a German-Turkish-Dutch co-production that earned the top prizes at both the İstanbul and Adana international film festivals, follows the lives and intersecting dreams of a rose seller, a taxi driver and a traffic policeman who live in the suburbs of İstanbul and come to work at the center of the city, the Bosporus Bridge, every day.
The other two Turkish titles shown at this year's London Film Festival are Kutluğ Ataman's “Aya Seyahat” (Journey to the Moon) and Reha Erdem's “Hayat Var” (My Only Sunshine). The 53rd London Film Festival runs Oct. 14-29.
