The Wild Pear Tree
Short description
Sinan has just finished university and returns to his home village in rural Turkey with ambitions of becoming a writer. He has completed a book and now needs money to get it published, so he tries to raise funds while reconnecting with the friends and surroundings of his youth. His plans keep running into trouble, largely because of his father İdris, whose gambling habit has buried the family in debt. Sinan's uncertainty about his own future and his strained relationship with his father weigh on him as he struggles to move forward.
The film is directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, who wrote the screenplay with Ebru Ceylan. It is the sixth feature he directed, following Winter Sleep, and it stars Doğu Demirkol as Sinan and Murat Cemcir as İdris, with Bennu Yıldırımlar, Hazar Ergüçlü, Serkan Keskin and Tamer Levent in supporting roles. The production was an international co-production involving Turkey, Germany, France, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Qatar, Macedonia and Sweden, and it runs 188 minutes. Its worldwide box office stands at around 2 million USD.
Audience response has been strong: on IMDb it holds 8/10 from roughly 31,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.5/10 from about 325 votes. A film critics' rating of 8.4/10 from 81 reviews places it above both audience scores, indicating that critics rated it more highly than general viewers did.
What's left behind the scenes
- Filming took 3.5 months.
- The film received a 15-minute standing ovation from the audience at the Cannes International Film Festival.
- Initially, the film was edited to run for 5 hours. The editing process took Nuri Bilge Ceylan almost a year.
- It took over 9 months to write the screenplay.
- Due to the whims of the local weather, the final scene featuring the protagonist and his father was shot in five different weather conditions. In the end, the director chose the version shot during a snowfall.
- The scene with the child and the ants is based on an incident that happened to Akin Aksu's father in his childhood.
- Nuri Bilge Ceylan cast Murat Cemcir as Idris after seeing his monologue from the finale of a comedy series on YouTube.
- The film was based on the true story of Akin Aksu's father, and the main character, Sinan, was modeled after Aksu himself.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
