NZIFF: Yellow Letters

A celebrated Turkish theatre couple are suddenly targeted by the state and stripped of their livelihoods, leading to their marriage, their ideals and their sense of self being pushed to breaking point.

Winner of the Golden Bear (the Berlin Film Festival's top prize), this is a riveting and urgently relevant political drama.

Shot in Germany but set between Ankara and Istanbul, Yellow Letters follows the pragmatic Derya (Özgü Namal) and her more egotistical, indignant husband Aziz (Tansu Biçer), along with their daughter Ezgi (Leyla Smyrna Cabas). On the eve of Derya and Aziz’s new play, it’s shut down by the government for no evident reason via “yellow letters” officially laying off the couple and their company.

Yellow Letters is set against a backdrop of swirling student protests against a government that, while technically a democracy, is under the stranglehold of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s executive presidency — where the media, especially, is under state control.

Here, director İlker Çatak’s Golden Bear-winning film is both a gripping marital drama and a rallying cry against artist censorship. Çatak (who is German-born but of Turkish descent) based the film on his encounters and conversations with Turkish artists who, between 2019 and 2020, were dismissed from their positions over charges like signing a peace petition or smoking cigarettes backstage. That the couple’s transgression in the state’s eyes is never fully explained makes Yellow Letters all the more potent — a stark reminder of how censorship, travel bans, and forced resettlement are stifling artists globally.

Phone: 06 835 7781

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