Hayat Var

A distilled blend of Erdem’s thematic and stylistic trademarks, My Only Sunshine is a dreamy film about harsh realities. One of the most beautiful odes to the Bosphorus, the work unfolds the tale of 14-year-old Hayat, a member of an old Istanbul family who lives with her fisherman-smuggler father and sick grandfather. Like its characters (or “figures”), the film maintains a stylistic distance while nurturing a mystery. In contrast, emotions sometimes burst through the arabesque soundtrack. Once the best friend of the new “immigrant villager to the big city” and, concurrently, a cultural danger in the eyes of the Turkish state, arabesque (Turkey’s Arab-influenced music genre) is the music of self-destruction, love, and rebellion against fate in a loveless world. Such is Hayat’s world, but with poetically edited images and sounds, and camerawork that dotes on the Bosphorus, My Only Sunshine is romantic enough in itself. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)