The Announcement (Anons) is a film that exemplifies the nonsense rhyme “where’s the axe? / it fell in the water / where’s the water? / the cow drank it / where’s the cow? / it ran for the hills….” It is perhaps the first story of its kind in Turkish cinema.

There is a job to be done -overthrowing the governmentbut, as they say, even the best thought-out plans can go awry. Especially if that plan is hatched, not by people of a sufficiently neurotic disposition to foresee that everything can go wrong, but by a bunch of characters convinced that everything will happen in a straight line and everyone involved think linearly like themselves… The film’s putschists are held back from taking over Istanbul Radio and announcing the coup on air in part by the intricacies of everyday life, but also by a larger, invisible authority, the invisible presence of the Elusive Big Brother; and word from Ankara… All through the Announcement, the much-anticipated ‘word from Ankara’ hovers over the heads of the Istanbul-based putschists like a blunt version of the sword of Damocles. And when it fails to come, the heroes resist being honed by the twists and turns of life, refusing either to change or become the wiser.

Fatih Confidence