Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan: ‘Filmmaking is not an analytical exercise for me’

Born in Istanbul in 1959, Nuri Bilge Ceylan studied chemical and electrical engineering at a time of strong student, social and political unrest in Turkey. He never worked as an engineer for a day, instead travelling to reflect on his future to places like London and Kathmandu, eventually returning for army conscription. After a year-and-half of military service, he decided to dedicate his life to cinema.

A few brief stints as a professional photographer and an actor later, he made his first short film, Koza/Coccoon, in 1995. It became the first Turkish short film selected to the Cannes film festival where he would win the top prize, the Palme d'Or, two decades later for his seventh feature film, Winter Sleep. Choosing characters from the many layers of Turkish society, he relentlessly explored the human psyche to look at the tensions outside in his long films like Uzak/Distant (2002), Climates (2006), Three Monkeys (2008) and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) that have made Ceylan one of the finest filmmakers in the world today. His newest film, About Dry Grasses, tells the story of an art teacher doing compulsory teaching service in a school in the Eastern Anatolian region facing Kurdish separatism.

In an interview with Moneycontrol, Ceylan, who presented the film in the prestigious competition section of last month's 76th Cannes Film Festival, talks about the making of the movie, his distinct style of long, indoor conversations between two people, and what influences him as a filmmaker. Edited excerpts:

A still from Nuri Bilge Ceylan's latest film, the Cannes-premiered 'About Dry Grasses'.

You set your new film, About Dry Grasses, in a school in Turkey's Eastern Anatolian region in the middle of a harsh winter. Winter is back in your movies as a character.

The winter increases the feeling of being in a remote place in the middle of nowhere. The main character — Samet, a young art teacher finishing his fourth year of compulsory teaching service in a remote village in Anatolia — feels he is out of the centre, his life is somewhere else. That is what he feels. In a way, the winter increases this feeling.

What was the beginning of the new movie project that comes five years after your last film, Wild Pear Tree?

The beginning actually was something real. It started with a diary and notes of Akin Aksu, one of the scriptwriters of the film. Aksu is a real teacher who lived something like the character of Samet. He wrote the screenplay with me and my wife (Ebru Ceylan). I read the diary and notes, but didn't want to make a movie at first. But several months later we wanted to give it a try. The three of us came together and wrote for one year. Then, suddenly, we saw a script, a very long script, two times longer than Winter Sleep. It was more than five hours originally, but edited to three hours and 17 minutes.

The film has a big cast of non-professional actors.

Not many. We cast students, mostly from the region. They are very strong girls and boys. The children are very different from the rest of the people there. They are more self-confident than others because they grow up on the outside and take up more responsibilities. They also begin to work much younger. They are surprisingly confident.

Samet, the main character, is accused of torture of young students. Is the film a reflection of the #MeToo movement and gender identities?

I never make films about some social and political issues. But these things, including the #MeToo movement, happen in real life. After receiving the diaries, I investigated what really happened in the teacher's life. There was no (sexual) abuse here. But there is always a special relationship sometimes between a teacher and a student. You love some students, the teacher's energy gives you some meaning. You create these kinds of things in these remote places all the time. Sometimes this delicate relationship breaks arbitrarily.

Turkey is coming out of a massive tragedy in the earthquake in February this year. Was the production affected because of the earthquake?

The shooting was finished before the earthquake happened. I was in Istanbul for the post-production at that time. Some of the summer scenes at the end of the film were shot in an area in Anatolia that suffered the earthquake. For instance, we shot in the location of the large, ancient pillars in an archaeological site in Anatolia. One of these pillars in a nearby site fell during the earthquake.

How do you go about making a movie with more than half-an-hour long conversations?

There are long conversations in Winter Sleep and Wild Pear Tree as well. Since my last film, I have been concentrating on long conversations more. I like conversations, to watch it in theatres, in novels also. For example, in Fyodor Dostoevsky's novels there are a lot of pages of discussions. Russian literature was a big influence for me. I read Crime and Punishment at 19 years old and since then the world has been completely different for me. I like long conversations and I want to try them myself. But that doesn't mean that I will always do this. Maybe I will begin to try different things next. I prefer listening in my private life. But when I argue with my wife sometimes we argue until the morning without stopping. If you feel you are in danger somehow, your existence is in danger, then you speak a lot to protect yourself.

Do you plan a lot before the production?

I never make too many plans and calculations. I just go to the set and decide. But I take different approaches, of course, for instance, in editing. Editing is the only place you have time for everything. You are alone in the editing room and you have a lot of time to think. I make my decisions during editing. For example, there is a moving camera in one scene, but I may also have done some still shooting in the same location. Filmmaking is not an analytical exercise for me. I never feel okay during the shooting. Even afterwards. You are never satisfied with filmmaking, never. But you have to stop at one point. During those times the deadlines make you feel good.

In several countries around the world, students are taking the role of the opposition to protest against authoritarian regimes. Are you looking at the youth of today in the film?

Yes, it is easy for young people to become activists. They don't have anything to lose. As you get older, there are many things to lose. There is a saying in Turkish, 'When people are younger they are more Leftists and when they get older they become more right-wing'. In the film, there is a discussion between a young Kurdish boy, who wants to join the PKK (the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party), and an older man, who criticises him.