Gitmek: My Marlon and Brando(HKAFF 2022)

Blurring reality and fiction, Hüseyin Karabey’s first narrative feature chronicles the real-life love story of Turkish actress Ayça and Kurdish actor Hama Ali, who fall in love on set and then return to their respective homes in Istanbul and northern Iraq. Keeping in touch via letters and calls, the two long to reunite but the onset of the Iraq War thwarts their plans. With Hama Ali unable to leave, Ayça decides to go to him. While others are fleeing war, she embarks on a cross-border journey to an unknown country to meet her lover. Shot in documentary-like manner with the stars playing themselves and their real video letters interspersed in the film, Gitmek: My Marlon and Brando is a poignant profile of a woman’s determined love amid the turmoil of war.