WALL – Director and screenwriter Nuri Bilge Ceylan was sentenced to compensation for using the text of Polat Onat without permission in the letter he included in the movie Ahlat Ağaç.
According to the news of Cumhuriyet newspaper, The episode “Letter from an author who did not want to attend the Country and Literature Symposium”, which took place in the most striking scene of the movie Walnut Tree, which was screened in 2018 and competed for the Golden Palm Award at the 71st Cannes Film Festival, was the subject of the lawsuit the same year.
It was revealed that the relevant text was the text of the “Unmixed Countryman”, which was previously published in the 1271th issue of Varlık magazine and in the book of Letters from the Countryside of Literature. Then, the owner of the work, Onat, filed a lawsuit for 40 thousand TL against the director and screenwriter of the film, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and the production company of the film, Zeyno Film Production Company, on the grounds that the relevant text was used without permission.
The lawsuit, which was opened in 2018 and was heard at the Istanbul Intellectual and Industrial Rights Law Court, was concluded on 13 December 2022.
The court decided that the text of the writer Polat Onat was used without permission in the film and “detection of infringement”. The court ruled that the owner of the work should be paid “material and moral compensation”. Writer Polat Onat and his lawyer Yasemin Arpa said that they will share their views on the subject after the reasoned decision is announced.
The text of the “Unmixed Countryman”, which is the subject of the court, is the subject of the dialogue between the main character Sinan (Doğu Demirkol) and another character, writer Süleyman (Serkan Keskin), about the “letter of an author who does not want to attend the Country and Literature Symposium”. .