Majority

Colour, 35 mm
Turkey, 2010, 102 min
Section: Horizons

Synopsis

Twenty-one-year-old Mertkan lives in Istanbul. Although safe and stable, his life is entirely unfulfilling. He lives with his parents, helps out at his father’s construction company, and spends evenings with his friends cruising shopping malls and discos. After meeting a girl named Gül and gaining a little self-confidence, it seems that Mertkan will find the strength to stand up to his authoritarian father; the elder man is against a relationship with a girl whose "people only want to divide our country.” Will Mertkan find the determination to avoid becoming the kind of man that his domineering father wants him to be? With a sure hand, this family drama subtly delves into criticism of Turkish society and its ills. The director’s seemingly detached look at the characters enables him to penetrate their inner worlds, their emotional lives. The events of an ordinary existence transform into an absorbing struggle for liberation from parental domination, one that requires sufficient will and decisiveness.

About the director

Seren Yüce (b. 1975, Istanbul) graduated in archeology from Bilkent University of Ankara. In 1999-2005 he worked in television as a first assistant director. In 2006, he was the first assistant director on Özer Kiziltan’s A Man’s Fear of God (Takva) as well as Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven (2007) and Yesim Ustaoğlu’s Pandora’s Box (Pandora’nin kutusu, 2008). Majority, his first feature length film, took several awards, including the Luigi De Laurentiis Award at Venice. Yüce considers his movie "a piece of self-criticism: of myself and of the Turkish society of which I am a member [...] My aim is to take a look at ‘us’ through the story of a family: ‘Family’ is the core of our society.”