Hope

Having also been selected by several other surveys and polls as the Best Turkish Film, Hope represents a turning point in Güney’s career: it is a masterpiece which marks the end of the “ugly king” period and begins the “Yılmaz Güney phenomenon”… Hope is the first and most important example that reveals how much Yılmaz Güney was affected by Italian neorealism.  Neorealism – the cinematic movement that reflects the reality of poor, suppressed people without the use of clichés or artificiality - was not merely a source of inspiration for Güney: the film also shows that he contributed much to neorealism himself.. Cabbar, a poor coachman from Adana, struggles to support his wife, his old mother and his five children, under dire living conditions. The lottery tickets in which he has invested his hopes, bring him nothing, his luck has abandoned him. Debt collectors harass him, he is pushed around, humiliated, one of his horses dies and the other is confiscated. He has no other option but to search for some buried treasure... and Hodja indicates where it may be found. Yılmaz Güney depicts horrific poverty and despair with unprecedented sobriety. This directness does not prevent the film from attaining a mastery that can only be defined as ‘chilling’. The characters are well defined, the events are stirring, the social criticism accurate, and the resulting film leaves its indelible mark on the audience. Yılmaz Güney wrote the script, directed and acted in the film Hope. He also lived through it… The reality of the children beaten for the 25 kurush they spend riding a bicycle, the aggrieved women, the dog licking the milk, the dying horse. These images echo in the cinema like a cry from the screen. Hope is fortunately one of the “unburied” treasures of cinema history!