Tension has long simmered between Turkish soldiers and Kurdish separatists in southeastern Anatolia and, in 2015, the conflict escalated into a military lockdown. Given the lack of media coverage, locals began filming the empty streets in single-take, one-hour clips which were posted to the internet and then vanished. Coinciding with this event is the falling of the Leonids, a spectacular meteor shower which emblazons the black skies with impermanent light.
Istanbul, today. The city has become one big machine that pulls people apart. Through the streets of the city echo the voices of young male and female workers. The harsh reality of an uncertain economic phase is felt in each segment of what is left of the Turkish society class structure. A Kurdish girl stands up against her family rules and tradition. The last young member of a diminished clan remembers the past ruefully. A child worker is forced to support his family since he is the only one who earns some money. A young unemployed male sells himself to tourists in front of the Blue Mosque. His body is the last working tool he is left with. Torn between the West and the East, Istanbul becomes the city symbol of a world that can neither go back nor (yet…) step forward.
Colony is a film about psychogeography, the memory of landscape, trauma and remembrance.
Gulyabani is an entity, a ghoul, an outsider. She’s the restless spirit of a desolate and lonely place. Fethiye Sessiz, a notorious clairvoyant from Izmir in 1970s and 1980s, remembers fractions of her survival from abuse, kidnappings and violence. Recounting the events of her childhood through her diary and letters to her estranged son, Gulyabani recollects the emotional landscape in the most violent period of post-Republic Turkey, where the memory of the future and fragments of the past come together at once.
It’s been years since Akın has been in and out of the hospital. He’s relentless, angry, and shell-shocked from being stuck in the system. Since his discharge, he’s well aware that his old life is long gone. He has become unable to leave his family house except for occasional visits to religious monuments in Istanbul. During those visits, he falls into a state of ecstasy as he tries to take refuge in God. These divine structures trigger something in him. As he loses touch with his true self, his mind shifts into another reality.
