About Dry Grasses
Turkish grandmaster Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Uzak) dives into the psyche of a self-absorbed teacher in Anatolia hoping for a transfer to Istanbul. Merve Dizdar won the award for best actress at Cannes.
Middle-aged Samet is a quick-witted and quick-to-anger elementary school art teacher in a traditional village in Eastern Turkey, who dreams of a posting in his native Istanbul. He shares lodging with his more attractive and likeable colleague Kenan and spends his nihilistic days developing an inappropriate fixation on fourteen-year-old teacher’s pet Sevim. After a love letter from Sevim is confiscated in a school-wide search, a complaint is leveled against him. Enter Nuray, a fellow teacher whose past political activism has rendered her disabled, allowing her to choose postings anywhere in the state – just the escape Samet needs. The only problem is that Nuray seems to favour Kenan over Samet.
With ABOUT DRY GRASSES, Ceylan proves once again to be a grand master in portraying people who are totally stuck in their lives. In this case because, like Samet, they cannot find a way out of an inhospitable environment, an unwanted job and a patriarchal society with rigid views on the relationships between men and women and between teachers and students. Meanwhile, we can enjoy Ceylan’s trademark impressive panoramic shots and intellectual conversations.