Bir Zamanlar Anadolu'da / Once Upon a Time in Anatolia - by Nuri Bilge Ceylan (2011)

A group of men set out in search of a dead body in the Anatolian steppes.
A night spent gathering evidence of a killing reveals a great deal about both the criminals and the men bringing them to justice in this drama from Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Kenan (Firat Tanis) and Ramazan (Burhan Yildiz) are two men who have confessed to murder, and Naci (Yilmaz Erdogan) is the police detective who has been assigned to wrap up the details of the case. With several of his colleagues in tow, Naci heads out to the woods with the killers in order to find and recover the body. However, Kenan and Ramazan's memories about the night of the killing are foggy, and it takes far longer than anyone expected to arrive at the scene of the crime. Over the course of a long night, the men talk about many different aspects of life, and their conversation explores their attitudes about life in Turkey and the human condition in general.

This film won the Grand Prix in Cannes, and it was deserved. A team goes into the countryside to find the body of a murder victim. The team includes the two men accused of the murder,one of whom has confessed and says he wills show them where they buried the body, the police chief, prosecutor, doctor, diggers, and guards. As the night drags on into the next day and the body is not found, the men grow more and more tired. Much of the film is beautifully shot in the dark or semi-dark, lit only by the headlights of the cars or a lamp in the village where they stop to rest. The filming is slow, showing the beautiful countryside and vignettes that wonderfully shed light on the different characters. What seems to be a simple task grows more and more complex; everything in the movie turns out to be more complicated than it first seems. Everyone seems to be guilty of something, so the film becomes a question not only of will the body be found, but who is guilty of what?

IMDB info 8.4/10 from 4,747 users
Stars: Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan and Taner Birsel
Production land: Turkey | Bosnia and Herzegovina
Run time: ~150 min