Winter Sleep

Aydın is a former stage actor who now runs a small hotel in the Anatolian steppe. He lives there with his younger wife Nihal and his sister Necla, who is recovering from a recent divorce. As winter sets in and snow covers the surrounding landscape, the hotel becomes both a shelter and the setting for the tensions between the three of them. Aydın's dealings with his wife, his sister and the people around him gradually expose the distance that has grown between them.

Winter Sleep was directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, who wrote the screenplay with Ebru Ceylan. It followed Once Upon a Time in Anatolia in his filmography and came before The Wild Pear Tree. Haluk Bilginer plays Aydın, with Melisa Sözen as Nihal and Demet Akbağ as Necla; Ayberk Pekcan, Serhat Kılıç and Tamer Levent appear among the credited cast of twenty-nine. The film runs 196 minutes and was released in June 2014.

In its original Turkish the film is titled Kış Uykusu, and it was produced across Germany, Turkey, France and Japan. It took about four million dollars worldwide, a modest figure consistent with its art-house scale. On IMDb it holds 8 out of 10 from roughly 59,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 7.5 out of 10 from around 644 votes. A critics' rating of 8.3 out of 10 from 85 reviews places it close to its audience scores.