Ilker Catak on Berlin Competition Film Yellow Letters and Why Artists Must Show Spine

Derya and Aziz are a celebrated artist couple from Ankara. They lead a fulfilling life with their 13-year-old daughter, Ezgi. But then an incident at the premiere of their new play changes everything. Overnight, they find themselves targeted by the state. And they receive yellow letters, losing their jobs – and their home as well. The couple has to move to Istanbul to temporarily stay with Aziz’s mother. He takes on odd jobs to survive while sticking to his convictions, while Derya looks for a way to become financially independent. Distance develops between them and their daughter. The time comes when they must choose between their values ​​and their shared future as a family.

No, this is not a story taken from the news headlines, even though it very much sounds like one. And writer-director İlker Çatak (The Teacher’s Lounge, I Was, I Am, I Will Be) knows it. His new film, which focuses on this artist couple facing state repression, is called Yellow Letters (Gelbe Briefe). He directed it based on a screenplay that he wrote with Ayda Meryem Çatak and Enis Köstepen. Özgü Namal and Tansu Biçer lead the cast, which also features Leyla Smyrna Cabas and İpek Bilgin.

Much of the creative team behind The Teacher’s Lounge is back for Çatak’s latest movie, including cinematographer Judith Kaufmann, editor Gesa Jäger, music guru Marvin Miller, and production designer Zazie Knepper.

Yellow Letters world premieres in the competition program of the Berlin International Film Festival on Friday, Feb. 13.

Çatak talked to THR about Yellow Letters, setting a Turkish story in Germany, and telling the audience which German cities are standing in for the Turkish cities, and why artistic freedom and standing up against political repression are more important now than in a long time.

Were there specific real-life cases or themes that inspired the story of the film?

There were these mass layoffs in Turkey that I knew about and that a friend of mine who worked in theater told me about. He was laid off for no reason, such as smoking backstage or something like that. On the other hand, I was looking for a marriage story. Marriage is something that I really wanted to make a film about, because it’s such an interesting institution. Love and affection are there, and on the other hand, you have [an] abyss and coldness and all that kind of stuff. So it was an interesting thing for me to put these two together and say, how about we make a film about marriage in a political environment that is very hard to deal with.

You have the German cities of Berlin and Hamburg standing in for the Turkish cities of Ankara and Istanbul and are highlighting it in the film, which added a bit of a meta feel. Why did you choose that approach?

I started writing this story about Turkish academia and these layoffs. The story took place in Turkey, and at some point, I felt like a tourist in my own screenplay. And I told my producer and co-writer, and he said, “I understand you have the privilege of living in Germany and you don’t want to make a film about people in Turkey. Why don’t we send this film into exile, where many of our Turkish colleagues are already living?” It was his idea, so I can’t take credit for that, but it was just a brilliant idea.

And I ultimately said this is genius. This is just very good, because the thing that is happening over there isn’t just part of something there. It’s everywhere. It’s taking place in Germany. It’s taking place in the U.S. It’s taking place in Russia. It’s [happening] in all those countries where they’re trying to cut us off from our liberal and civil rights. It was important to take that step to make the film a more universal one.

Did you feel that the movie was becoming more and more timely while you were working on it?

It has been a reality in Turkey for a long time, but … in democracies like the U.S., now it feels like something [that] has arrived there, too. But it’s the reality of many countries, and it has been for many years, only that it wasn’t right in front of our eyes. But now that it’s happening in front of our eyes, it seems timely. Unfortunately for many [people], it’s timeless.

How did you go about casting your Yellow Letters characters?

I have been a big fan of Özgü Namal ever since I was 15. I saw her on stage, and she was this incredible young talent. She was the youngest on stage, too. She’s just a few years older than I am, but she was acting with these old Turkish stars on this stage close to my school. So I saw her, and I was like, wow, who’ is that? [Decades later,] my Turkish cast director, Ceren Sena Akdeniz, says, “Don’t you want to try Özgü Namal?” I said, yeah, she’s great. And so we asked her, and she came, and she hadn’t acted in nine years. So she came back for our film, which was, of course, a big honor.

And Tansu, I saw on stage. He just had to do his first two lines, and I knew: that’s my guy. So I put them in a casting. Özgü is such a star in Turkey that she wouldn’t do castings, but for me, she did it. And they started acting, and it just felt very organic. So I thought, this is a good match. We can do this.

What was the hardest part of making Yellow Letters?

The biggest challenge was to navigate all these themes and find the right balance for my two main characters. The goal was to make a film where half of the audience is with him, and the other half is with her. I really wanted an ambivalence there to have these pressure points and see how I can use them to have people be in her favor and then to be in his favor, and back and forth and back and forth up until a point where, hopefully, as an audience, you can feel for both of them.

Do you like working with ambivalence and ambiguity in your films?

For me, filmmaking is much more a vehicle to ask a question rather than one to provide answers. And the works that stay with me the longest are the ones that make me think, not just in film, by the way, also in literature. I have talked about Bartleby, the Scrivener or 2001: A Space Odyssey, films and literature that don’t provide answers but leave you thinking and leave you with a mystery. I love giving an audience material, and then they can do whatever they want with it. And that’s interesting for me to see where they take it. It’s an exchange. They give me their feedback. That’s something I think communication in filmmaking and in the arts in general should be about. I don’t want to be taught about things and told this is how you should feel. So, yeah, I like the ambivalences, because life isn’t just black and white. Life is all those shades of gray.

I wanted to go back to how you mentioned that the themes Yellow Letters explores feel more universal today. Do you think audiences around the world will be interested in seeing it?

Yeah, well, it’s a, universal issue. You must make up your mind who you go to bed with, to speak metaphorically. Who are you working with? Who are your partners? Are you working with the Amazons of this world? Are you working with a company known for their boss who is just laying off people at the Washington Post? It’s not just a question in Turkey and Germany. I think we all have to be aware that with much of our media … politics is trying to dictate what our media should be like. And we as storytellers are not immune to that, because, of course, they’re trying to lure us. There is a seduction going on. You can be seduced by money. You can be seduced by fame. If you’re talented, they will try to get you on their side.

So I think we all have to find a stance here, and we all have to show spine. We need to ask ourselves what is my price? Is there a price? What have I risked in my career? What am I even doing? What are the stories that I want to tell? Filmmaking is a great privilege, but it comes with responsibility.

That sounds like an issue that artists in the U.S. may have to consider when it comes to, say, the Kennedy Center these days…

Yeah. I was a big fan of Philip Glass before. Now I am an even bigger fan of Philip Glass [after he removed the premiere of his new symphony from theKennedy Centerlineup]. Stand up to the bully. With power comes responsibility. So I think we, as artists who have a name, should use it wisely.

Are you working on any new projects?

There are a bunch of projects that I’m working on, one of them being Flesh, the Booker Prize winner [by David Szalay] I’m trying to adapt. That’s an interesting one, because it’s circling around masculinity and forms of masculinity, which I think is something that I haven’t explored enough in my films.

On the other hand, I’m working on a TV show with my German producer Ingo Fliess, based on [the novel] The Granddaughter by Bernhard Schlink. So right now, I’m in this realm of literature and trying to adapt things.