Men On The Bridge

Men On The Bridge (2009)

Köprüdekiler

The stories of three men working at the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul are told by the original characters, in this mosaic depicting real persons exposing their lives and aspirations.

Date of release
2009-04-15
TMDB
6.6 / 10 (11)
Runtime
1h 27m
Genres
Drama
Director
Aslı Özge

Casting

Interesting facts

Men on the Bridge is a 2009 Turkish drama film directed by Aslı Özge. The film, which tells about the young generation who lives in the suburbs of Istanbul and come to the center of the city to make a living, follows a rose seller, a taxi driver and a traffic police officer whose lives unknowingly intersect every day on the Bosporus Bridge in Istanbul. It "wowed the audience in last year's Locarno and London Turkish film festivals, and won Best Film awards at last year's Istanbul International and Golden Cocoon film festivals", according to Emrah Güler, writing in Turkish Daily News.

Production

The film, which is based on the real lives of three men, with Fikret Portakal and Umut İlker playing themselves, was originally intended to be a documentary film, but after an extensive research period in Istanbul starting in 2006, Özge along with director of photography Emre Erkmen got to know the main characters, who are working around the bridge, and decided to write a script based on the protagonists' own stories.

At certain times of the day I traveled many times from the European side of Istanbul to the Asian side crossing the Bosporus Bridge, where there is a continuous gridlock. Often while I was sitting in the car, I photographed the illegal street hawkers, who sell to the bored drivers bananas, pretzels, water, flowers.... I recognized that police, shared-taxi drivers and street hawkers are the ones, who are working directly at the bridge.

The production, which was funded by the Turkish Ministry of Culture, was not granted permission by the Turkish police authorities to feature a real police officer and so Murat Tokgöz, the brother of the real policeman upon whom the character is based, joined the production to play the part, with all other police roles are acted by professionals.

In April 2008, during the development period, the film was entered into the Pitching du Réel at Visions du Réel Festival, and in November 2008 a rough cut was entered into the Rough Cut Pitching at the International Film Festival Amsterdam, co-producer Mete Gümürhan from Rotterdam-based Kaliber Film subsequently joined the production, which was completed in April 2009.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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