Porkatal

Porkatal, like its protagonist’s life, begins in prison.

Engin (Musab Yilmaz) is turning six inside a women’s prison, where his mother is incarcerated and the walls of which are the world he has known all his life. In Sis Gurdal’s short drama, which plays in the main shorts competition at Sarajevo Film Festival, Engin is – necessarily – removed from that world and sent to live with family he doesn’t know in a coastal village. A tender coming-of-age drama, the film explores how we must adapt to new life circumstances, the nature of coming into contact with masculinity for the first time, and how far a son will go to be reunited with their mother.

The difference between the hermetic world Engin inhabits with his mother (Naz Goktan) and the new home he must adjust to is skillfully managed. The film doesn’t treat this is a careering hand-break turn as much as a subtle but fundamental shift. The colour palette morphs from the pastel walls of the institution to the more naturalistic sun-baked hues of a rural town. Life in the prison is tender and intimate, but ordered, while outside things are looser, freer, and harder to comprehend. Musab Yilmaz, playing Engin, does a wonderful job of conveying a mix of wonder and disorientation.

He makes connections in his new home, with a local girl Nergis (Nur Pera Abuc), who he initially gravitates towards, and then to his older cousin Mustafa (Merdan Karatas), who becomes the first male role model in his life. The first days and weeks of this new life are spent trying to determine how he can return to his mother, but as the film progresses, he must come to terms with the hard reality of the situation he’s been made aware of. Porkatal is a skillfully made short whose ending is crushingly symbolic of Engin’s realisation of his own powerlessness, and what it means to accept such loss and keep on keeping on.

Director, screenwriter: Sis Gurdal
Cast: Musab Yilmaz, Naz Goktan, Nur Pera Abuc, Merdan Karatas
Producers: Laure Dahout, Sinan Yusufoglu
Cinematography: Pablo Garrido Carreras
Editing: Sercan Sezgin, Pablo Gomez-Pan
Music, sound design: Mert Cetinkaya
Production design: Osman Ozcan
Production companies: Si Films (Turkey), Tiresias Films (France)
Venue: Sarajevo Film Festival (Short Film Competition)
In Turkish
16 minutes

Read our coverage of more short films in our Verdict Shorts section.