Motherland Hotel

Motherland Hotel

The most poignant film about loneliness, lovelessness, obsession and depression in Turkish Cinema…As well as the best novel adaptation. Ömer Kavur recreates Zebercet, the receptionist of a sad, bleak hotel in a small Anatolian town, adapting him from Yusuf Atılgan’s novel in an attempt that seemed to others as ‘risky’ or even ‘frightening’. Here we have a story of the disintegration of a “waiting” man, unaware of the thin ice he’s standing on, with no concern about going anywhere, or finding a safe foothold. The tragic Zebercet, hopelessly waiting for the return of a mysterious woman who once came with the Ankara train and stayed a single night in the hotel, turns this ‘dream-real’ woman into an obsession. He becomes increasingly remote from the reality of everyday life and becomes increasingly introverted….a process reflected in the hotel itself, as it too withdraws from the world. Within the film the reality of closed spaces as well as an atmosphere of ‘hazard’ is successfully created. In a way the Stephen King – Stanley Kubrick – The Shining relationship is repeated, this time forming the Yusuf Atılgan – Ömer Kavur – Motherland Hotel sequence. Zebercet’s effect on the Hotel and vice versa is witnessed in the form of ‘shining-shine’. The story deals with the Anatolian ‘single person’ rather than an ‘individual’ in the Western sense. Still, Ömer Kavur has managed to make the film universal with his plain, economic, uncluttered narrative style… A success underlined by the numerous prizes won by the film, ranging from Golden Orange in Antalya to Nantes. Motherland Hotel is a film that meshes the psyche of Zebercet and the reality of the outside world with a dark grandeur interlaced with a powerful fragility. Tunca Aslan