Times and Winds 2006

Hidden desires emerge with mythic potency in this exquisitely beautiful portrait of life in a hard-scrabble, hillside village on Turkey’s northwest coast. Twelve-year-old Ömer is in the midst of an Oedipal crisis and considers enticing a scorpion to bite his father. His friend Yakup has a crush on the beautiful local school teacher – as does his dad. Yildiz is the apple of her father’s eye, but is disturbed to witness her parents making love.

“If the fourth feature from Turkish writer-director Reha Erdem covers some not-unfamiliar territory – rural families misalign, local conflicts flare and die, and children wrestle with the mysteries of puberty while goat bells clamour and seasons slip by – it does so with sufficient grace and forthrightness to render its content breathtakingly fresh. It is not Erdem’s project simply to observe sweetly limited lives or to seek nobility in lack of sophistication. His film is a nuanced drama, possessed of both comic and dramatic force, along with ravishing and expressive visuals.” — Hannah McGill, Sight & Sound