Projects
The Criminals
Two young lovers seeking privacy on a getaway weekend get stranded in a hotel for not being married.
Nazlı and Emre, two students in their early 20’s, are lovers. Emre lives with his family, while Nazlı stays in a girls’ dormitory. When the police raid their car while they’re making love, they lose their only private space. Determined to enjoy themselves, they set off by car for a weekend by the sea. To save money, they pick up a carpooling passenger, Caner, a strange man in his 40s. Caner makes them uncomfortable questioning them about their sex lives. Tension builds between the couple as Emre is increasingly wary and even jealous of Caner who plays games with them. Realising Caner might be on the run from the police, Nazlı and Emre plan to get rid of him, but their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. They eventually get towed to a small town. They have to stay the night in a hotel and Emre share a room with Caner, as he isn’t allowed to be with Nazlı since they’re not married. At night, Emre sneaks into Nazlı’s room. They start making out, but their moment is ruined by terrifying knocks on the door. Hotel staff harass them, accusing them of prostitution, and threaten to call the police, turning their trip into a nightmare. The pressure is unbearable, and their relationship is put to the test. Exhausted and traumatised, but reunited, they finally reach the sea.
The Criminals is the story of a generation on the path to sexual freedom and its struggle against what society considers taboo or ‘sacred’. Nazlı and Emre’s romance is blossoming, and they can’t find any privacy. They have no power beyond their pure libidos, making them both fragile and powerful. I imagine this feature as a road movie with thriller elements. The journey allows Emre and Nazlı to know each other better since being on the road takes us out of our comfort zone. The impressive landscapes of Anatolia create the atmosphere and make the audience feel they’ve traveled to another world, somehow archaic. Cars but also hotels are very cinematic. Hotel rooms are places of intimacy, a limit that society has no right to cross. An authoritarian regime wants to control even this last space of individual freedom. The carefree journey under the paradisiacal sun of Anatolia transforms into a hellish experience. At the end, Emre and Nazlı have grown up almost overnight. They’re traumatised but don’t give up on freedom and acknowledge its pricelessness when they finally reach the sea.
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