A distilled blend of Erdem’s thematic and stylistic trademarks, My Only Sunshine is a dreamy film about harsh realities. One of the most beautiful odes to the Bosphorus, the work unfolds the tale of 14-year-old Hayat, a member of an old Istanbul family who lives with her fisherman-smuggler father and sick grandfather. Like its characters (or "figures”), the film maintains a stylistic distance while nurturing a mystery. In contrast, emotions sometimes burst through the arabesque soundtrack. Once the best friend of the new "immigrant villager to the big city” and, concurrently, a cultural danger in the eyes of the Turkish state, arabesque (Turkey’s Arab-influenced music genre) is the music of self-destruction, love, and rebellion against fate in a loveless world. Such is Hayat’s world, but with poetically edited images and sounds, and camerawork that dotes on the Bosphorus, My Only Sunshine is romantic enough in itself.