Titled “The Way Home: The Films of Turkish Master Yılmaz Güney,” the program comes as part of TIFF’s year-round program Cinematheque, and will run Jan. 26-Feb. 5 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox-Reitman Square, the Anatolia news agency reported on Tuesday.
The eight-film selection includes some of the key films in the career of Güney, who spent many years behind bars as a political prisoner under successive military regimes. Some of the films featured in the selection were directed by proxy from a jail cell, TIFF says on its website about the special program.
The program will open on Jan. 26 with a screening of “Umut” (Hope), Güney’s 1970 drama that served as his international breakthrough. The drama, which Güney co-directed with Şerif Gören, also stars Güney in its title role as an uneducated cart driver who wants a better life for his family.
The second film on the bill is “Sürü” (The Herd), a 1978 drama directed by Zeki Ökten, which won the British Film Institute award and the top prize at the Locarno Film Festival that year.
“Yol” (The Way), director Gören’s 1982 drama that won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, which is billed as the masterpiece of Güney’s screenwriting career; “Zavallılar” (The Poor Ones), a 1974 drama Güney co-directed with Atıf Yılmaz that follows the story of three convicts as they relate the causes for their imprisonment; and “Ağıt” (Elegy), Güney’s 1971 directorial effort that is billed as one of his most powerful studies of rural poverty and oppression, are also on the lineup.
“Arkadaş” (The Friend), the 1974 drama that is cited among his finest works in his later years as a director, will wrap up the program, a joint effort with the İstanbul-based Yılmaz Güney Culture and Art Foundation.
