Yesim Ustaoglu’s latest feature, Artakalan (What Remains), premiered in competition at San Sebastian and is still making the festival rounds. The film concerns a creative couple living in a flat in Istanbul who have hit a wall, and the picture refuses to hurry past their impasse. Its quiet approach may prove too restrained for broad appeal.
The film opens with Elif, a celebrated poet, having grown stagnant over time. Mehmet, who moved from teaching music to playing in a jam band, then loses his day job. Their son Selim is left behind as the couple grows further apart. These early scenes are rendered with great fidelity, showing the dead end that artists like them reach once they settle down and try to build a family. The conflicts mostly happen internally, and the movie asks the viewer to sit quietly with that.
The Dead End That Opens Up
The story begins with Elif and Mehmet raising Selim in a comfortable flat filled with books, records, paintings and handmade toys. They have built a rich intellectual life, but it has stopped moving. Elif’s poetry has grown stagnant. Mehmet’s jam sessions bring him joy at night, but his daytime job disappears.
When we first encounter the pair, they are caught up in a period of personal turmoil typical of middle age. The situation deteriorates from there, with days stretching into weeks of mounting strain. A single extended, trying sequence finds them concluding that parting ways is unavoidable, despite their clear affection for each other remaining intact throughout.
The story resumes with Elif deciding to drive off and head out on an open road. She hands Selim over to Mehmet, who keeps working through his usual routine until he receives a phone call about his father, Mustafa, being on his deathbed back in their hometown.
The tale begins with two individuals at odds, and then transforms into a road movie as each sets off alone on a journey back to their roots, reconnecting with who they once were even as they remain apart. Mehmet faces his father over a family tragedy from long ago. Elif heads to the distant cliffside village in central Turkey where her grandparents spent their lives.
A Poet’s Retreat
Elif’s trip the centerpiece of a movie that slowly reveals how such voyages can be a healing process for people disconnected from themselves and one another, especially when they’ is portrayed by Ustaoglu as scraping by in a metropolis like Istanbul, which for a poet means experiencing the great outdoors and the quiet beauties of her family’s native home, where things still seem to function like they did a hundred years ago.
The images rather than the dialogue carry the weight in Kiril Prodanov’s work, with Elif framed within soft natural light and snow-filled landscapes. His cinematography captures that beauty through graceful widescreen vistas, and the film rests more on those surroundings than on the words exchanged between the couple. Even when it’s the purity of the mountains to which Elif retreats or the decrepit apartment that brings back Mehmet’s memories of him caring for his father during his final days, the visuals do the heavy lifting.
Mehmet has also used sound in his work. He recorded his father’s final breaths for one of his experimental pieces, which connects his sorrow to his art through a small detail.
Two Actors Holding Back
The actors Karayel and Akdulger deliver their best work when asked to show internal conflict through quiet performance rather than spoken words or obvious emotional scenes. Viewers looking for a film built around outward, forceful clashes may find themselves disappointed, since the troubles in What Remains play out largely within the characters rather than between them. Yet this self-control is precisely what gives the film its power.
These two people begin to heal themselves only by stepping outside their ordinary lives — leaving behind the apartment, the city and the familiar daily round they had grown used to. Through this departure, they discover how to carry on living and working, pressing forward rather than remaining where they were.
The Road to Healing
The film’s path through festivals echoes its own story. It opened in competition at San Sebastian before moving on to complete its run, where it will probably secure bookings across European cinemas, although its restrained approach may keep it from reaching a wide audience.
What Remains asks viewers to sit with discomfort rather than rushing past it. The film offers no quick fixes or easy resolutions. It watches two people move through pain toward something resembling peace, one quiet frame at a time.
Yesim Ustaoglu wrote and directed What Remains, a film that premiered in competition at San Sebastian. It stars Oyku Karayel, Metin Akdulger, Ali Kayra Kul, and Ilyas Salman, with cinematography by Kiril Prodanov. The Match Factory handles sales for the film, which runs 2 hours 6 minutes long.
The film’s honesty is its strength. It does not pretend the couple’s problems will resolve neatly. It simply shows them taking the first steps toward doing so.
Key Facts
– Premiere: Competition at San Sebastian
– Runtime: 2 hours 6 minutes
– Sales: The Match Factory
– Starring: Oyku Karayel, Metin Akdulger, Ali Kayra Kul, Ilyas Salman
Source material: “‘What Remains’ Review: A Slow-Burn, Subtly Powerful Portrait of a Creative Couple in Turkey Coming Back from the Edge,” The Hollywood Reporter.
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