Middle East Film Series

Join us for the North Carolina Premiere of:
The Wild Pear Tree
(Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2018, 188 min, Turkey, in Turkish with English subtitles, Color, DCP)

The gorgeous backdrop of rolling country and idyllic farmland are cold comfort to the frustrated hero of The Wild Pear Tree. Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia) captures the wrenching struggles of a bright literary graduate, Sinan (Aydın Doğu Demirko), who is trying to take flight in a world he can’t entirely accept. Ceylan revives a deeply humanist cinema of ideas in tracking Sinan’s path through the more urgent questions of youth, romance, religious orthodoxy, and shaking off the burdens of your family—without ennobling the all-too-human Sinan. Often shooting in unbroken takes, Ceylan compellingly “renders the frustrations of this young man as so much misplaced passion” (Kent Jones, Film Comment).

"A gentle, humane, beautifully made and magnificently acted movie."
— Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

"His funniest, most politically poignant work yet."
— Bilge Ebiri, Village Voice

"Ceylan expertly draws your eye and ear to the drama behind the drama, and gives the most gently naturalistic scenes the weight and grain of visions. The word visionary has been flogged by the film business to the point of redundancy, but with The Wild Pear Tree, Ceylan reminds us he has earned every letter of it." 
— Robbie Collin, The Telegraph (UK)

Sponsored by the Duke University Middle Eastern Studies Center (DUMESC), the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES), and the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI).

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Screen/Society screenings are free and open to the public.

Parking Info:  https://artscenter.duke.edu/parking/