World Cinema Series: The Films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan Once Upon A Time In Anatonia/ Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia / Bir zamanlar Anadolu’da

Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan

2011 / 157 min / DCP / Rating TBA

In Turkish with English subtitles

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia follows the course of a police procedure as it unfolds one lonesome night within the vast and rugged landscape of the Anatolia steppe. A group of policemen, a young doctor, a prosecutor, and the confessed killers attempt to locate and recover the body of the victim buried somewhere in the moonlit hills. Ceylan expertly balances the mundane and the metaphysical, as common everyday dialogue and the droll of administering logistical matters are concatenated with the gravity of introspective revelations and interweaving mysteries. This is further accentuated by the evocative landscape which serves as a sublime living presence – at times contemplative, claustrophobic, and horrific as it pulsates through the calm of the dead of night to the horrific and frantic rhythms of thunder and lightning. What seems to unfold as an anatomy of a murder soon reveals itself as a dissection of the human soul in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, a film of patience and sensibility that won the Grand Prix at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

This screening is happening on Saturday, 21 February at 8pm at the National Museum of Singapore.

To purchase tickets, please click [here](http://www.sistic.com.sg/events/wcs2015f).


Deputy Editor

Gary is one of those proverbial jack of all trades… you know the rest. When not writing about lifestyle and culture, he dabbles in photography, graphic design, plays four instruments and is a professional wearer of bowties. His greatest weakness: spending more money on clothes than he probably should. Find him across the social world as @grimlay