AS SHADOWS FADE

Director: Burcu Aykar

Producers: Nadir Öperli, Liman Film, Müge Özen, Solis Film, Anke Petersen, Jyoti Film

Country: Turkey 

Trapped by the Turkish traditional, heteronormative family ideal, Esin lives unaware of her passions. When she falls for the fiery Deniz, a distant family friend who takes refuge in their house, their intimacy pushes her to transcend her boundaries towards a dark place of secrets and heartache.

Synopsis:

Esin (27), a literature class teacher has a gloomy life with her father Taner (55). Everything begins with the arrival of Deniz (21), the daughter of Aunt Aliye who was like a sister to Esin’s mother, until they had a row and falling out, long before Esin’s mother’s death. After getting into a university in the city where Esin lives, Deniz asks to take shelter in their home, to attend her studies. At first Esin is reluctant to let her stay. However, Deniz, with her warmth and vivacity, changes the atmosphere in the house; Taner seems happier and Esin cannot reject her demands. As much as Esin is cold, distanced and joyless, Deniz is passionate and cheerful. Deniz awakens Esin to the existence of side roads, possibilities and hopes in life.

Director: Burcu Aykar

Born in 1977, Burcu Aykar graduated from the Psychology department of Bosphorus University and got her master’s degree in Film Studies at the University of Southampton. She worked as an editor at the Turkish film magazine Sinema, beginning her career as a film critic in 2000. She worked as a distributor of independent arthouse films for two years. She was the editor in chief of Total Film Turkey from 2006 to 2008. She co-wrote and co-directed two short films, Birth (Doğum, 2008) and Death (Ölüm, 2009) with Uygar Şirin. She has done jury work as a film critic of the Turkish Film Critics Association, a member of FIPRESCI, until 2015. She continues to write for the monthly cinema magazine Altyazı. 

Producer: Müge Özen

Muge graduated from the Faculty of Communication, Galatasaray University in 2005. She has worked in film acquisition. In 2012, she joined AC Film where she still works as a producer. She founded Solis Film in June 2015 and completed the 2017 EAVE Producers Workshop. Under the label Solis Cinema Sessions, she has been offering training programs to filmmakers. Muge was the co-director of the 2021 edition of co-production market, Antalya Film Forum.

Company profile

Following his experience in founding Bulut Film, where he produced Seyfi Teoman’s Summer Book and Our Grand Despair, Theron Patterson’s Dark Cloud and Aslı Özge’s Lifelong, Nadir Öperli founded his own company Liman Film. The company’s first titles were Emine Emel Balcı’s Until I Lose My Breath (Berlinale Forum, 2015), Emin Alper’s Frenzy (Venice Competition, 2015), Ahmet Necdet Çupur’s Les Enfants Terribles. Latest title Burning Days (2022) by Emin Alper was in competition in Un Certain Regard at the Festival de Cannes.