Alone in New York, Yakup clings to the hope of reunion. As the wait drags on, his grip on time and reality begins to slip, pulling him deeper into a fragile and unsettling inner world.
Drawing from lived experiences of exile and displacement, the film unfolds as an intimate psychological drama of separation, resilience, and the fragile terrain of the human mind.
Directed by Nadir Sarıbacak and Samy Pioneer
100 minutes. In English and Turkish.
Nobody was calling. So we wrote a story.
That’s how Nadir Sarıbacak tells it: he phoned Ayhan Hulagu and said they should write something, because nobody was calling. When the film was finished we didn’t wait for a distributor either. We started with one night in Washington, D.C., audiences began voting for their own cities, and we went where the votes were. That came to 32 nights across the US and Canada since April, and more than half of them sold out. This fall it crossed to Europe, ten nights from Brussels to Paris, and now it is in cinemas across Germany.
Vote for your cityPeople in more than 20 countries have asked for Gazelle in their city. Amsterdam asked loudest, and the tour went there in October.
After the film, they took the stage with us.
Each of them moderated a Q&A on the tour, across North America and Europe.
United States and Canada
David EhrlichIndieWire
Brooklyn
Inkoo KangThe New Yorker
Palo Alto
Mick LaSalleCritic and author
Palo Alto
Merawi GerimaFilmmaker, Residue
Washington, D.C.
Alonso DuraldeThe Film Verdict
Los Angeles
Stephen FarberPast president, LA Film Critics Association
Orange County
Ana SouzaSundance programmer
Orange County
Stephen WhittyCritic and author
New Jersey
Doug HarrisHouston Film Critics Society
Houston
Farran Smith NehmeFilm critic and novelist
New Jersey
Felicia FeasterJournalist and film critic
Atlanta
Jason GorberFilm critic
Toronto and Ottawa
Europe
Juliette GoudotFilm critic, Moustique and GAEL
Brussels
Anna SmithCritic and broadcaster, Girls On Film
London
Bert RebhandlFilm critic
Berlin
Cristina Kolozsváry-KissProgrammer, IFFR
Rotterdam
Dana LinssenFilm critic
Amsterdam
Jan Storø and Frode NordåsOslo
Margrit FrölichFilm writer, epd Film
Frankfurt
Daniel KothenschulteFilm critic
Cologne
Jordan MintzerThe Hollywood Reporter
Paris
Also on the US and Canada run: critic Dr. Paul Salfen, filmmaker Saleem Reshamwala, actor Bill Timoney, and scholars Dr. Philip Clayton and Dr. Jeannette Okur.
