Sonbahar

A film by Özcan Alper

Yusuf, a Turkish political prisoner who was sentenced to jail in 1997 as a university student aged 22, is released on health grounds ten years later. Having lost the best years of his life, he returns to his childhood home in a mountain village in the eastern Black Sea region. Yusuf is welcomed only by his sick and elderly mother, his father having died while he was in jail and his older sister having married and moved away to the city. Economic factors mean that the village is now populated almost exclusively by old people, the only person of his own age that Yusuf finds is his childhood friend Mikail.

As autumn slowly gives way to winter, Yusuf goes with Mikail to a tavern where he meets Eka, a beautiful young Georgian girl who earns a living by prostitution. But neither the timing nor the circumstances are right for these two people from different worlds to be together – love becomes a final desperate attempt to grasp life and elude loneliness, for Yusuf at least. For Eka, Yusuf is something like a character from the pages of a Russian novel – a character who inhabits a faraway world and a faraway time. Their relationship explores and compares the dreams, frustrations and the pains of two people, one of whom has spent ten years of his life in prison because of his socialist ideology, and the other who suffers from the after-effects of that same ideology.

The film also provides a cultural glimpse into the simple life of the people living in this region of the Black Sea. In the mountain village time seems to stand still, or at least to advance very slowly, and this impression skilfully contrasts the destiny of Yusuf, who having been released from prison due to severe illness, has returned to his home to die. But although Yusuf is trying to come to terms with himself, he does not seem to belong in this external world where people have problems other than politics.

With its strikingly powerful images and hypnotic musical soundtrack, Autumn is a slow-paced, minimalist and deeply moving drama exploring recent Turkish political history, the loss of idealism, and the personal perspectives of time and place.

Au revoir les enfants

A film by Louis Malle

Set in a rural Catholic boarding school during the Nazi occupation of France, the film charts the friendship between Julien and new boy Jean. But Julien is soon burdened with a dangerous secret, that Jean is a Jew who is being hidden from the Nazis by the friars who run the school. This award winning film is based on events from the director's own childhood during World War II.

At the end of the Christmas holidays in 1943, Julien Quentin, the son of a wealthy family, reluctantly returns to the tedium of his boarding school in the French countryside. But then the headmaster, Père Jean, introduces three new pupils to the school, one of whom, Jean Bonnet, is the same age as Julien. Before Jean's arrival, Julien had been the class leader, both academically and influentially, but the new student appears to be Julien's academic and artistic superior. Whilst respectful of his classmate's abilities, Julien is naturally a little envious which leads to some rivalry between them. This however turns into healthy competition and eventually, with growing mutual respect, the two become friends.

One night in the school dormitory Julien awakes to find Jean wearing a kippah and praying in the Hebrew language. After searching Jean's locker, Julien discovers the truth about his new friend whose real name is Kippelstein. He and the other two new pupils have been granted secret asylum by Père Jean who is now hiding the children from the Nazis. During a visit by Julien's mother, Jean accompanies them to a restaurant for lunch. Two Milice officers arrive and attempt to expel an elderly and distinguished gentleman whom they identity as Jewish, but a German officer dining at a neighbouring table steps in and orders the 'collaborators' out of the establishment.

Joseph, the school's kitchen assistant, is then exposed for selling the school's food supplies on the black market and he implicates several students as accomplices, including Julien and his brother, François. Père Jean has no choice but to dismiss Joseph although he refrains from expelling the students for the sake of their parents. Following this, on a cold morning in January 1944, the school is raided by the Gestapo. As Julien's classroom is searched and the Gestapo officer asks for the identification of Jean Kippelstein, Julien unintentionally gives away Jean Bonnet by looking in his direction. The other two Jewish boys are then hunted down and Julien encounters their informant, Joseph the kitchen assistant.

As the students are lined up in the courtyard, the Gestapo officer denounces the illegal nature of Père Jean's actions, declaring that as a result the school will close. Père Jean and the three Jewish boys are led away by the officers. The children call out, "Au revoir, mon père!" and Père Jean responds, "Au revoir, les enfants! À bientôt!"

A deeply personal and tragic examination of the Holocaust, childhood friendship and accidental betrayal. Told from the perspective of a child, it captures the fearful nature of children under enormous pressure from external events they cannot comprehend.

L'appartement

A film by Gilles Mimouni

Max has at last decided to settle down and marry his current love, Muriel, the sister of his boss. He is in a jeweller's shop choosing an engagement ring for her but is unable to make a decision between three very different rings, each of which he says he likes. Just as he is about to leave Paris on a four-day business trip to Tokyo he catches a glimpse of his former love, Lisa, a beautiful girl who disappeared mysteriously from his life two years before. Discovering the door key she has left behind whilst making a telephone call, he impulsively abandons his plan to fly to Japan and finds himself pursuing her, this unexpected opportunity having awakened feelings for her that he cannot now ignore.

A meeting with his old friend Lucien who currently has difficulties in his own love-life, enables Max to confide his feelings to someone while he tries to make sense of them himself. Now obsessed with meeting Lisa, his search eventually leads him to her address and he enters the apartment to wait for her. He is then surprised to find it is a case of mistaken identity when another girl, Alice, enters the flat and emotionally distraught, attempts to throw herself from an upper-storey window. Max drags her back into the room and tries to calm her down. She tells him, however, that her name is also Lisa and that it is her apartment. Captivated by her mystery and her strange resemblance to Lisa, he is irresistibly attracted to Alice and eventually they become romantically entwined.

Still determined to meet Lisa, Max finds that she has a lover, and that her lover's wife has recently died in suspicious circumstances. Gradually, Max is drawn into the mystery, which ultimately he hopes will lead him closer to Lisa. Things however are not what they appear to be, and much of what is now happening is a result of past events which gradually become clear to us when seen in flashbacks. Central to these is the enticingly enigmatic Alice who appears to have had a history with Lisa that curiously parallels Max's own.

This convoluted, multi-layered and brilliantly constructed romance uses repeated motifs and juxtaposed images to subtly indicate the parallels, connections and interpretations in the events of the lives of these characters. Switching between time, chic cafés, beautiful Parisian apartments, and the three women in Max's life, this very stylish suspense thriller confounds us with an extraordinary and elusive mystery, with undercurrents of obsession and jealousy, as it races towards its heady and devastating conclusion.