Oscar doesn’t excite me as much as everyone else

At the Adana Golden Boll Film Festival, where Turkey met with the audience for the first time after being screened as an Oscar nominee, KARAR’s ‘We didn’t win any Oscar’ awards, can you break this repeat in history?’ Tayfun Pirselimoğlu, the director of the Kerr movie, answered the question: “Of course, there is an importance we attribute to the Oscar, but Hollywood is another world. I wish something like this to happen. Everyone gets excited to hear the word Oscar, of course, but it doesn’t excite me as much as everyone else…”

SALIHA SULTAN

Turkey’s Oscar nominee ‘Kerr’ made its first screening at the International Adana Golden Boll Film Festival after its nomination announcement. The film, which was adapted from the novel of the same name by director Pirselimoğlu and was nominated as Turkey’s nominee for the Best International Film category at the 95th Academy Awards, met with the audience at Esas 01 Burda AVM Cinemapink. After the screening of the film, which attracted great interest from the people of Adana, the screenwriter and director Pirselimoğlu, producer Vildan Erşen, actors Erdem Şenocak and Rıza Akın and art director Natali Yeres came together with the audience. Speaking in the interview moderated by Esin Küçüktepepınar, Pirselimoğlu stated that he was very happy to take part in the festival for the first time and conveyed the meaning of Adana for him with the following words: . I met Rıza Akın while sitting in a cafe and then I shot my movie ‘Rıza’ in 2007. That’s why Adana has a special place in my film career.” Pirselimoğlu then answered the moderator Küçüktepepınar’s question, “What do you think of the criticisms that the film does not match the Oscars?” with the following words: “Going to the Oscars and wandering around festivals do not determine my motivation for making films. I am a director who strives to make good films. It is pleasant to encounter such a favor, and I will not reject it.” In his speech, Pirselimoğlu emphasized that the name of his movie comes from the root of the word ‘recurrence’ and said, “Kerr is the root of the word repetition. I have my obsessions, I am also obsessed with repetition. I was wondering if something was repetitive. For example, the beginning and the end of your Kerr novel and another novel are the same. I like this naughtiness. A story comes knocking on your door, sometimes it’s a novel, sometimes it’s a picture, sometimes a movie. “I had the belief that Kerr had to become a visual, and I shot the movie,” he said. Stating that he thinks that everything repeats by moving on a circle, Pirselimoğlu said, “I think we have finally reached the point where we started. In my opinion, there is a process of evolution between that moment when we start something and complete it. All my movies end as I started, all my movies have the same beginning and end. “I think it’s part of my own evolution,” he said.

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‘HOLLYWOOD CINEMA IS ANOTHER WORLD’

Director Pirselimoğlu, after this part of his speech, said, “You said you are obsessed with the subject of recurrence. There is a repetition that Turkey cannot overcome regarding the Oscars. We haven’t won any awards in the history of the Oscars, do you think your film will break this repeat in history?” He replied to my question as follows: “There is an importance we attribute to the Oscar, of course, but Hollywood is another world. The field where the cinema revolves around us is very different. This is a difficult question, I don’t know the answer. Of course I hope something like this happens. Hearing the word Oscar excites everyone, of course, I understand, but it doesn’t excite me as much as everyone else…” Pirselimoğlu continued in his speech, emphasizing that the most important thing for him was to complete a film from which he set out, and underlined that this is more valuable than all awards. The film ‘Kerr’, which premiered at the 2021 Antalya Film Festival, received the Best Director awards from the Istanbul Film Festival and the Antalya Film Festival. It is a matter of curiosity whether Kerr, who was selected as Turkey’s candidate candidate after the evaluation of 10 films that applied to the Cinema Profession Association, will be included in the Oscar short list to be announced on 21 December after the pre-vote on 12 December.

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‘My character is schizophrenic, according to some, allegory of Turkey’

Erdem Şenocak, the leading actor of Turkey’s Oscar nominee ‘Kerr’ movie, answered the questions of the audience after the screening in Adana. Expressing that the character he plays is a difficult character, Şenocak talked about the conversation between Pirselimoğlu and his first meeting with Pirselimoğlu after reading the script of the film and his view of the character with these words: she asked. So I thought it might be a trick question, and then I said, ‘I don’t think it’s a character. He said that he was very happy, because there is this in acting, some actors even ask the zodiac sign of the character they will play. However, throughout the history of acting, there is a sharp distinction, whether the actor acts internally or externally, that is, from his psychology, from his feelings or from his actions, but acting theorists say that this is inseparable. That’s how I tried to revive it. The connotations of the character are different for everyone, some can read the character as a schizophrenic, some as an allegory of Turkey. It’s not the actor’s job to get caught up in these associations. The actor’s job is to make the audience emotional.”