Waiting For The Clouds

Drawing on the novel Tamama by Yorgos Andreadis, the story takes place in the 1970s in the Turkish fishing village of Trebolu on the shores of the Black Sea, not far from the Soviet border. An old woman named Ayshe lives there with her dying sister Selma. An atmosphere of anxiety is prevalent in a country wary of its mighty communist neighbour; all those who don’t share the state’s political beliefs are treated with suspicion and paranoid fear. It even reaches the most remote corners and makes its influence felt. After her sister’s death, Ayshe withdraws from those around her and returns, in her memories, to unfortunate events that took place half a century before. Ethnic cleansing took place here during the winter of 1916, during which the Ottoman army killed or expelled the Greek minority that had settled the land 3,000 years prior. One of the handful who survived was a Greek girl named Elena.... (source: Catalogue 40th Karlovy Vary IFF)