Direction: Emre Kayis
Country: Turkey
Anatolian Leopard is a resolute, cerebral and languid drama written and directed by Emre Kayis, who successfully captures the inward turmoil of a solitary zoo director struggling to find his place in a corrupted society.
After more than two decades of hard work and dedication, the pensive director Fikret Ozturk (Ugur Polat) is confronted with the closure of the Turkey’s oldest zoo. In order to avoid that, and stop the privatization process, he fakes the escape of the indigenous Anatolian leopard, a symbol of the country and an endangered species. On that ground, he counts on the help of his loyal officer, Gamze (Ipek Türktan), whose dream is to be a flight attendant.
Polat’s performance is believable and his facial expressions show all the frustration, debility and ennui in the face of the system’s machination. His character internalizes all these feelings with a sense of disconnection from everything. Fearing extinction himself, Fikret is fed up with posing for pretentious crooks and tycoons who soak up everything he built.
Even not taking huge directing risks, Kayis does not hesitate to use a suitable composure in the shots, creating a genuinely entrancing tale of disappointment with a sense of tragic inevitability. The final result may seem austere for ordinary mortals, but the film will be gratifying for movie buffs who don’t get scared with the unrelenting bleakness (with subtle touches of humor) of an apt metaphor.
