ISTANBUL: Turkey yesterday celebrated the Cannes film festival success of Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, with the media hailing him for dedicating his Palme d’Or to victims of his country’s political strife.
Ceylan won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his epic drama Winter Sleep and dedicated the award to the Turkish “youth who lost their lives” in anti-government protests that have rocked Turkey over the last year.
“Great honour,” headlined Posta newspaper. “The best news in months!,” Sozcu newspaper wrote on its website, saying that the director had not “forgotten” to pay tribute to those who died.
“This beautiful and lonely country is proud of you,” Hurriyet newspaper wrote, referring to a previous acceptance speech by Ceylan, who dedicated his best director award in the 2008 Cannes Film Festival to “my beautiful and lonely country, which I love passionately”.
Meanwhile, in a phone call after the award, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip “Erdogan congratulated Ceylan for making the nation proud one more time,” his office said in a statement.
Winter Sleep marked the first top prize win at the world’s biggest cinema showcase for Turkey since 1982, when Yol by Yilmaz Guney shared the gong with I by Costa Gavras.
“A historical day for the Turkish cinema after 32 years,” wrote Milliyet daily. Ceylan had already won awards at Cannes for his previous films Uzak, Climates, Three Monkeys and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia.
AFP
