SUDDENLY

Director’s statement

SUDDENLY  is an atmospheric film that aims at luring the senses of its viewers to explore what it feels like to be a character who has lost the sense of smell and is losing visibility.

We follow our character’s curiosity that has never been tapped into, like a feared dark side, which leads her further away from the roles she is expected to fulfil; mother, daughter, wife. Feride Çiçekoğlu and I came together for the 3rd time in writing a script.  We feel strongly about our character becoming invisible as both a form of transgression and a way to question agency and womanhood. As we worked on the script we tackled issues of what is considered to be ‘permissible’ in terms of female desire,  where the private and the public space and self begins and ends… what it means to be a woman, to be selfish, to desire and walk in the streets. Being invisible, a voyeur and flaneuse, does it give a chance to redefine our character; Reyhan… does it give a chance for freedom? We hope to question.

Producer's statement

I know Melisa for her debut SEABURNERS which had quite a successful start in the international arena that we hope continues with her new film, SUDDENLY.  After she wrote SEABURNERS with Feride Çiçekoğlu, they have been working together for her second feature film as well. We had a chance to develop our script in Torino Film Lab Script Lab in 2019. 

With this film, Melisa, Feride and I, as women from different generations, are seeking the ways to deal with femininity, what it means to be seen, and to basically exist as a women. A woman who wanders around the streets and who switches her position from “gazed" to "gazing" excited us.  I believe this film represents the point of view of  three different generations of creative women in the movie industry, how we deal with femininity, the gaze and the way female desire is depicted in Turkish cinema. And this really excites me.

We are designing an international co-production for SUDDENLY. We have secured the production money from the Turkish Ministry of Culture. We participated Meetings on the Bridge and we received VFX Award there in April. Right now, we are in talk with Italian and Serbian producers for applying to their minority co-production funds in September. We are looking for majority co-productions from Germany and France and other possibilities. Our main character is a Turkish-German woman so we believe an international cast gives us opportunities for co-productions.

We are planning to shoot the film in spring or fall 2021 in Istanbul.