It was a beyond savvy move for director Deniz Gamze Erguven to set her debut feature film in Turkey. A country that straddles Europe and Asia, Turkey is a country idealistically and spiritually torn between the East and the West, the old world and the new, 21st century free will and millenniums of tradition.
It’s worth mentioning that Erguven was born in Hungary and raised in France.
All too often in other movies trying to say essentially the same thing as “Mustang,” filmmakers resort to blunt storytelling devices to make their points. Everything is very black and white and to the extreme, not unlike the handful of global wars perpetually commanding world headlines. Compromise of any sort is unacceptable and anything resembling it is viewed as an unforgiveable, crippling weakness. Erguven and her co-writer Alice Winocour operate in nuanced grey areas and outside of the typical narrative margins.
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