About Dry Grasses

Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan
197 min.
In Turkish with English subtitles

Nestled away in wintry East Anatolia, public-school art teacher Samet (Deniz Celiloğlu) yearns to leave the sleepy village for cosmopolitan Istanbul. Further disenchanted when he and Kenan (Musab Ekici), a colleague, come under public scrutiny, Samet fears circumstances will keep him in Anatolia and his dreams of a new life permanently out of reach. A silver lining is a budding relationship with Nuray (Merve Dizdar), a fellow teacher and firebrand who develops connections with both Samet and Kenan, forcing Samet to confront what he can’t readily accept.

The latest drama from celebrated Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan is a work of elegant, novelistic filmmaking, rigorously unpacking questions of belief versus action, the tangible versus the enigmatic, and who we wish to be versus how we live.

“…another very absorbing movie from this unique director — a Cannes Palme winner for his film Winter Sleep — who thoroughly deserves his continuing A-list status.” – The Guardian