Distant

Distant (Uzak, 2002) is a Turkish drama you can watch online on iFILM, written and directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Istanbul in winter: grey skies, snow on the Bosphorus, the particular silence of a city that doesn't stop but feels like it might.

Mahmut is a photographer — the kind who once had ambitions and now shoots factory catalogues. His young cousin Yusuf arrives from the countryside after losing his factory job, hoping to find work on a cargo ship. There is no hostility between them. There is something worse: the low-grade friction of two people who have nothing to say to each other sharing eighty square metres. Ceylan shoots in long, unmoving takes on 35mm film, and Tarkovsky's Mirror plays on the television in the corner — a pointed contrast to the kind of cinema this is not.

At Cannes 2003, the film claimed the Grand Jury Prize along with a shared Best Actor award for both lead performers. Quiet, exact, and genuinely bleak in the best sense. Stream Distant (2002) online on iFILM.