Yellow Letters
- Directed by
- Ilker Çatak
- Starring
- Özgü Namal, Tansu Biçer, Leyla Smyrna Cabas
- Duration
- 127 min.
- Year
- 2025
- Language
- Turkish
‘Hamburg is Ankara; Berlin plays Istanbul, and still reality feels more absurd than this film.’
The marriage of artists Derya and Aziz is tested after they both lose their jobs because of the arbitrary nature of the oppressive Turkish regime. Together with their 13-year-old daughter, they move to Istanbul to live with Aziz's parents and reshape their lives.
Berlin is Hamburg and Ankara is Istanbul. That was director İlker Çatak’s trump card to make his latest film – about a censored Turkish artist couple – without restrictions from the Turkish government. Following the success of his Oscar-nominated Cineville hit The Teachers' Lounge, Çatak once again hit the jackpot with Yellow Letters, which was awarded the prestigious Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival 2026. The film is provocative, critical, and exactly the kind of nail-biting, clever thriller you’d expect from this director.
‘Can art save the world? In the new film by İlker Çatak (The Teachers' Lounge), a committed couple from the Ankara theatre scene find themselves backed into a corner when they both lose their jobs to arbitrary state censorship. Celebrated actress Derya (Özgü Namal) has to hand over her starring role overnight, while director and teacher Aziz (Tansu Biçer) is prosecuted for allegedly inciting his students. Left without an income, the couple move with their daughter to Aziz's mother in Istanbul, where they must wait. Wait and wait and wait. Not for Godot, but for a bit of financial support from family, for new taxi clients, and for a court invitation to finally defend themselves. As they wait, they're forced to choose: do they stand proud for their principles, or quietly bow their heads out of self-preservation? The most remarkable thing about Yellow Letters is that the locations themselves act as performers: German Hamburg plays Ankara, and Berlin passes itself off as Istanbul. Because state censorship isn't new, oppression doesn't stop at the border, and if you look a little closer at authoritarian regimes, parallels are everywhere. In Yellow Letters, it isn't the theatre that's absurd, but the reality we have to navigate every single day.’
