Hemme'nin öldüğü günlerden biri

In Murat Fıratoğlu’s first feature, Eyüp is a seasonal worker labouring in a tomato field in southeastern Türkiye. When his foreman Hemme fails to pay his wages on time, the short-tempered Eyüp picks a fight with him. In the middle of a vast, arid field, where the tomatoes drying on the soil evoke the blood he plans to spill, Eyüp mulls over what to do. However, while it only took the burning heat of the sun to make Albert Camus’ Meursault kill a man, murder does not come so easily for Eyüp. In HEMME’NIN ÖLDÜĞÜ GÜNLERDEN BİRİ, fate plays out in an absurd and gently humorous fashion. Harkening back to the likes of Elia Suleiman, Abbas Kiarostami and Aki Kaurismäki, the film captures every encounter, every interaction as if it were a revelation, if not a divine intervention, each steering Eyüp away from his original intention. Yet the digressive structure of the story eventually comes to feel less like a deliberate narrative choice and more like an attempt to capture the natural course of life—because, as aptly expressed in the Heidi cartoon that Eyüp finds himself watching, transfixed to such an extent that he momentarily forgets everything around him: “Sometimes unpredictable things happen. Both good and bad.” (Öykü Sofuoğlu)

In the presence of Murat Fıratoğlu.