I can say that this movie is one of the best Turkish movies in the 90s knowing that it was nominated for many awards in several film festivals. The story is about a family who's living in a suburban in Istanbul. This big city, that we know better for the Bosphorus, its history and all the beauty that it's surrounded with, has also another aspect: a society even stranger to the most parts of Istanbul that still has hope and will to survive. The youngest boy of this family, Salih, is the center of the chain of events of this poor neighborhood. He falls in love with a prostitute and has to prove his power against the villain who is a threat to everyone living up there. Love, family, passion, death, pain are the main themes as well as hope and rage which define the life in this area. People need to fight in order to survive. In the end, the tragic chain of events keeps going on as if in old Greek tragedies. All of the actors are quite convincing, especially the villain played by Mustafa Uğurlu who succeeds in being a sadistic killer and his rival, the prostitute's young lover played by Okan Bayülgen who is a famous TV star in Turkey. The growing cultural differences in Turkey creates such problems not only in İstanbul, but also in many other big industrial cities. By watching this movie, you get to face the facts that these stories are real and inevitable. The suburbia in he movie is called "Kolera - Cholera" like the illness bringing only dead, but the people still have dreams and hopes and fighting against it. I highly recommend you watch this movie to see some rare examples of good Turkish films and also to know more about the life in the poor areas in Turkey.
Review of Agir Roman
