Among heaps of colourless films on Netflix, Paper Lives (‘Kağıttan Hayatlar’) stands a lustrous tree topper awaiting to be watched. Paper Lives unquestionably swings in as one of the finest Turkish films to be released in the past two years. Director Can Ulkay and writer Ercan Mehmet Erdem unve...
Summer is here, and the sun is shining. Maybe you’re chilling on the beach in North Cyprus or Turkiye or Britain (yes, for a change, the UK is having a proper summer!)? Or perhaps your mood craves something altogether more lively? For those of you who enjoy exploring new sounds and indie artists, th...
Holidays offer a fantastic opportunity to get stuck into a good novel or two. If you are looking to find the latest English-language page-turner by a Turkish writer or on Turkish themes, look no further than this Top 5 list of great reads for summer 2022.Keeping the House by Tice CinThrust right int...
ITV2’s hit television show Love Island is back to satiate our need for drama this summer with new bombshells and six-packed hunks. This season’s hot topic contestant is none other than British Turkish actress and model Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu. The 27-year-old Essex girl has topped worldwide trends on Twi...
The Lady of Heaven was the talk of the town last week when UK cinema chains Cineworld and Showcase ceased all screenings of the “blasphemous” film on the big screen. The British film claims to depict the origins of terrorism in Islam and its first victim, Lady Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muh...
Grudge is a film that starts off beautifully, bearing a plot twist with so much potential. Yılmaz Erdoğan, who both stars in the film and also penned its script, could have done a first in Turkish cinema had he taken a more adventurous direction when developing the crime mystery set around officers...
An eclectic crowd in East London were rocked by the new masters of Anatolian psychedelic pop, Altın Gün, on Friday night. From the euphoric reactions of the sell-out crowd at EartH, the long-awaited return (three years!) of the band to the British capital, fully loaded with their trademark synthesiz...
A cursory glance at the poster of My Father’s Violin / Babamın Kemanı (2022) as you scroll through Netflix suggests a nostalgic dive into a virtuoso’s life. Whilst this new Turkish movie doesn’t take the ‘Whiplash’ route into an upcoming musician’s world, as Engin Altan Düzyatan portrays an already...
‘In Good Hands’ (Sen Yaşamaya Bak) is a Turkish drama/romantic comedy on Netflix. My excitement of watching this new release transpired to be misplaced, as the film is rather underwhelming. The plot is spoon-fed to us right off the bat. Melisa (Aslı Enver) learns that she is terminally ill wit...
Metin Murat’s page-turner debut novel is an ode to all the people of Cyprus and their culture. A self-declared work of fiction set against the historic and political realities of the last 80 years between his ancestral home of Turkish Cyprus and London. The novel starts in 1930s Cyprus and Bamy...
