Cinema: Mustang

A beautifully mounted story about the demonisation of young female sexuality in a remote Turkish village.

In a remote Turkish coastal village on the Black Sea, five young sisters live under the guardianship of their grandmother and uncle after the deaths of their parents. When a neighbour witnesses the girls innocently playing on the beach, she reports this “scandalous” behaviour to their guardians, who institute a tyrannical regime of both physical and emotional imprisonment. 

All “instruments of corruption” and pop-culture artifacts are removed from the house, girly outfits are replaced with formless brown dresses, and, following a brief escape to an all-female soccer match, bars are installed on the windows and gates erected at the home’s entrance. As the eldest sisters are subjected to virginity tests and married off one by one, the younger sisters look on in fear and resolve not to succumb to the same fate.

The feature debut of Turkish filmmaker Deniz Gamze Erg????ven is a sensitive and powerful portrait of sisterhood and burgeoning sexuality.

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