A tale of crime, corruption, politics, power & manipulation, Burning Days concerns a young prosecutor who is newly appointed to a small Turkish town hit by water crisis and finds himself reluctantly dragged into the local politics that quietly escalates into an inescapable nightmare. Brimming with simmering tension and arresting from the get-go, Kurak Günler is an incendiary offering from Turkey.
Written & directed by Emin Alper, the film borrows elements from several genres and keeps us invested by not giving out every detail. Memory lapses, tense altercations, hidden motivations, heated rumours & unreliable characters ratchet up the drama while sustaining the narrative ambiguity and also contribute to the increasingly combustible finale that moves with an edge-of-the-seat intensity.
Apart from offering a microcosm of modern-day Turkey & its recent political happenings, the story also touches on Turkish homophobia without being explicit about it. Also, by not providing the audience a full picture of the event that sets the plot into motion, every character is suspect in one way or another. Add to that, the actors deliver solid performances in their respective roles and are thoroughly convincing.
Overall, Burning Days is a tense, gritty & scorching political thriller driven by strong performances that doesn't offer easy answers but gives the viewers enough pieces for them to come up with their own interpretations. There are several threads at play here, each further complicating the matter until the aggravating situation spirals out of control for our prosecutor and leads him to the slippery edge of a sinkhole.
Written & directed by Emin Alper, the film borrows elements from several genres and keeps us invested by not giving out every detail. Memory lapses, tense altercations, hidden motivations, heated rumours & unreliable characters ratchet up the drama while sustaining the narrative ambiguity and also contribute to the increasingly combustible finale that moves with an edge-of-the-seat intensity.
Apart from offering a microcosm of modern-day Turkey & its recent political happenings, the story also touches on Turkish homophobia without being explicit about it. Also, by not providing the audience a full picture of the event that sets the plot into motion, every character is suspect in one way or another. Add to that, the actors deliver solid performances in their respective roles and are thoroughly convincing.
Overall, Burning Days is a tense, gritty & scorching political thriller driven by strong performances that doesn't offer easy answers but gives the viewers enough pieces for them to come up with their own interpretations. There are several threads at play here, each further complicating the matter until the aggravating situation spirals out of control for our prosecutor and leads him to the slippery edge of a sinkhole.