Skip to main content
About Dry Grasses film image

About Dry Grasses

Kuru Otlar Üstüne

This event has passed

In a remote village in eastern Turkey, an art teacher named Samet (Deniz Celiloglu) enters his fourth and final year at an undesirable state-mandated teaching post. Before he leaves, however, he will have to navigate two tricky relationships: the first with Sevim (Ece Bagci), a young student who accuses him of inappropriate behaviour and kickstarts a formal investigation; the second with Nuray (Merve Dizdar), a fellow educator and potential love interest, whose political engagement challenges his well-worn apathy. Both will push him into existential crisis, forcing him to reconsider his place in the world. With About Dry Grasses, Palme d’Or-winning filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan delivers his richest, most expansive film yet. Against the harsh climes and forbidding landscapes of the Eastern Anatolian steppes, the Turkish director unfolds a philosophically profound tale of idealism and inaction, anchored by commanding performances from Dizdar (who won the Best Actress prize at Cannes) and Celiloglu. Novelistic in scale and yet startlingly intimate, this is a cinematic experience like no other.

 

Best Actress, Cannes 2023

 

Community Partner

Director
Cast

Merve Dizdar, Deniz Celiloglu, Musab Ekici, Ece Bağci, Erdem Şenocak

Credits
Country of Origin

Turkey/France/Germany/Sweden

Year

2023

Series

Showcase

Language

In Turkish with English subtitles

Film Contact
18+
197 min
Award Winners Drama

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Credits

Executive Producer

Mediha Didem Türemen

Producer

Alexandre Mallet-Guy, Janine Jackowski, Jonas Dornbach, Maren Ade, Nadir Öperli, Kristina Börjeson, Anthony Muir, Sébastien Beffa

Screenwriter

Akin Aksu, Ebru Ceylan, Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Cinematography

Cevahir Şahin, Kürşat Üresin

Editor

Oğuz Atabaş, Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Original Music

Philip Timofeyev, Giuseppe Verdi

Art Director

Meral Aktan

Director

Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Nuri Bilge Ceylan was born in Istanbul on January 26, 1959. In 1976, he started studying chemical engineering at the Istanbul Technical University, At the end of 1993, he started shooting his first short film, Koza. The film was screened in Cannes in May 1995 and became the first Turkish short film selected for the Cannes Film Festival. Uzak (2003) won the Grand Prix and the Best Actor Award for the two leads at Cannes in 2003. His next films all won awards at Cannes. In 2006, Climates won the FIPRESCI International Critics’ Award, in 2008 Three Monkeys won the Best Director Award and in 2011 Once Upon a Time in Anatolia won the Grand Prix again. In 2014, his seventh feature film Winter Sleep won the Palme d’Or and the FIPRESCI International Press Award. With The Wild Pear Tree, in 2018, he returned to the Official Selection in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival.

Filmography: Three Monkeys (2008); Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011); Winter Sleep (2014); The Wild Pear Tree (2018)

Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre

The Gleaners and I

Dir. Agnès Varda
82 min

This lovely essay film about the art of foraging is also a self portrait of the artist at 72.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Miracle Worker

Dir. Arthur Penn
107 min

Academy Awards went to Best Actress Anne Bancroft and Best Supporting Actress Patty Duke for their moving portrayals of Annie Sullivan and her remarkable blind and deaf pupil, Helen Keller. "A film that storms where most biopics respectfully tiptoe."

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

In the Mood for Love

Dir. Wong Kar-wai
107 min

Wong Kar-wai's most acclaimed and popular film is a love story about two neighbours (Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung) who are drawn together by the long absences of their respective spouses + a newly released short companion piece from 2001.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

In the Heat of the Night

Dir. Norman Jewison
110 min

Sidney Poitier in an indelible role a Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs, pulled in as a murder suspect when changing trains in Mississippi. He allies with bigoted local sheriff (Rod Steiger) to solve the case.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Rachel, Rachel

Dir. Paul Newman
101 min

The story of a shy schoolteacher whose sexual awakening in her mid-30s leads to a deeper re-evaluation of her life, the film is sensitive and sympathetic, as well as a surprising directorial debut from Paul Newman.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Ghosts of the Sea

97 min

Imagine an especially poetic true crime podcast about a sailor who built his own sailboat and lived on the high seas, but lost not one, but two wives along the way... Now imagine it told from the vantage point of his daughter: Ghosts of the Sea.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema