In her 5th feature, Yesim Ustaoglu celebrates the ingenuity of approaching to the story of today. Remarkable observations on regular lives in a small town of Turkey leads a sudden empathy of viewer. In Karabuk, a town on the main road between two biggest cities of Turkey, Istanbul and Ankara, everyone and everything is passing by and that transience causes a strong gap between the present and the future, on its inhabitants. Specifiying this transition point trickily symbolize the zeitgeist of Turkey, stumbling between modern and traditional. In such atmosphere, characters feel the same stagnancy while dreaming about a sudden and easy way to slip through the net, and waiting for a miracle, whatever it's about-money, love or happiness. Such representation of today and -what I like most about Araf / Somewhere in Between is- its bold language, are the elements which make the movie extremely strong and success to make the audience feel being stuck, so an identification.
Review of Araf/Somewhere in Between
