GUILT

2022
114’
Turkey
Colour

Reyhan, raised in a religious family, arrives to spend her summer holidays at her grandmother Ummu’s (65) house in a conservative Central Anatolian village, accompanied by her mother Hatice (37), and her 7-year-old brother Mehmet. The 13-year-old is gripped by a state of inner turmoil. She has just had her first period and dreads the consequences of being unable to perform the required religious rites. Reyhan’s concerns mount after she finds out that the water supply at her grandmother’s village house is cut off. She is desperate to find a way to perform the required religious ablution rites, which she has always been told will protect her from attacks by djinns and facial disfiguration.

Umran Safter is a documentary filmmaker and journalist. For more than two decades she covered Turkey and the Middle East, including the wars in Iraq and Syria for both print and television media. She started her filmmaking career in 2015 with a feature-length documentary called The Eye of Istanbul (2015). She also directed and produced Sevan, the Craftsman (2017), The Sin of Being a Woman (2018) and Leave the Door Open (2021).