Steam: The Turkish Bath

Francesco is a successful Italian architect and interior designer living in Rome, where he runs a design firm with his wife, Marta. When his aunt Anita dies in Istanbul, he inherits the old Turkish bath, or hamam, that she owned there. He travels to the city intending to settle the paperwork and sell the property quickly, but stays with the Turkish family who looked after the hamam for his aunt. In their home and in the bath itself he encounters a warmth and sense of belonging that his life in Italy has lacked, and he gradually becomes absorbed in the city and in the story of his aunt's own past. The decision of whether to restore the hamam or let it go becomes tied to a broader change in how he wants to live.

The film is Ferzan Özpetek's directorial debut, the first of 13 films he has directed. He wrote the screenplay with Aldo Sambrell and Stefano Tummolini, and the cast includes Alessandro Gassmann as Francesco, Mehmet Günsür as Mehmet, Francesca D'Aloja as Marta, Halil Ergün, Şerif Sezer and Başak Köklükaya. A co-production between Spain, Italy and Turkey, it runs 94 minutes.

Opinion on the film has been moderately positive: on IMDb it holds a rating of 6.8 from around 7,900 votes, and on TMDB 6.6 from a much smaller number of votes, while a critics' score of 6.2 comes from 17 reviews. Audience and critical responses therefore sit fairly close together, with viewers slightly more favourable.