“Bahtı Kara” (Dark Cloud), eagerly anticipated for being an improvised take in its entirety, grabbed three Golden Karagöz statuettes -- best film, best screenplay and best actor for Reha Özcan -- and a modest cash prize of TL 50,000 at the festival’s closing gala, held Friday night at the Merinos Culture Center.The Golden Karagöz prize for best director, which carries a cash award of TL 25,000, went to Atalay Taşdiken for “Mommo Kızkardeşim” (Mommo, the Bogeyman), which also brought its child actress Elif Bülbül a jury’s special prize for her realistic portrayal of a helpless little girl trying to stay together with her brother following the death of their mother. İlksen Başarır’s debut feature “Başka Dilde Aşk” (Love in Another Language) won Saadet Işıl Aksoy the best actress statuette, while the film, a modern-day romance between a deaf young man and a young woman who works at a call center, also earned the Turkish Film Critics Association (SİYAD) jury prize.
Five of the 10 titles on the national competition bill were entrants that missed out on big prizes at last month’s Altın Portakal (Golden Orange) International Film Festival in Antalya. Apart from “Başka Dilde Aşk,” all four other entries, Murat Saraçoğlu’s “Deli Deli Olma” (Piano Girl), Ümit Ünal’s “Gölgesizler” (Shadowless), Yavuz Özkan’s “İlkbahar Sonbahar” (Spring-Fall) and Mehmet Bahadır Er and Maryna Gorbach’s “Kara Köpekler Havlarken” (Black Dogs Barking) came away empty handed in Bursa, too.
Both the best film and best screenplay prizes of the festival’s international feature competition went to “The Artist” by Fernando Sokolowicz.
In the meantime, Bursa, the northwestern city that once hosted the capital of the Ottoman Empire, proved it is more than just a city worth a visit for its historical structures and famous candied chestnuts while it wrapped up this year’s festival Friday night. If anything, the festival and its closing night proved that Bursa is a keen and spirited festival organizer. Yet that spirit was not reflected in the public, with most festival films showing to almost half-empty theaters. Ticket prices for the showings were kept relatively low at only TL 3; however, this did not seem to have created the anticipated increase in the number of festival-goers. The quality of the films featured in the official selection was also a matter of debate among professionals -- including critics, journalists and producers -- throughout the festival. The 10 titles running in the national feature competition were selected from among 24 submissions, a relatively small number possibly due to the rather unattractive cash prize.
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