While distinctive in their own right, most directors are never as riveting or fashionable as the subjects they put on the screen. Even the most independent, iconoclastic directors whotackle provocative materialbelong to polite society and play the game of Hollywood to some degree. Still, directors, like any artist, are fascinating figures to examine and deconstruct, as filmmakers require a special — if not esoteric — mind that stands out from the rest.
We’re familiar with method acting, but one director, Turkish filmmaker and left-wing activistYilmaz Güney,embodied the radical and dangerous lifestyle of his politically charged films.In one short lifespan, Güney sparred with the Turkish government, received multiple prison sentences, wrote films during his sentences,won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and escaped prison. Despite such impressive credentials, Güney’s life was anything but a Hollywood spectacle.
Yilmaz Güney Brought a New Wave of Filmmaking to Turkey
More than an Academy Award, the highest honor a director can achieve is if their films are so dissident that they wind up in jail, and not the figurative “director’s jail.“Italian filmmakerRuggero Deodato’s notoriousCannibal Holocaust, a found-footage horror film about four filmmakers exploring the treacherous jungles of South America, was so gruesome and authentic that national authorities seized the movie, arrested him, put him on trial, and convicted him of obscenity and animal cruelty.Jafar Panahiwas one of manyfilmmakers from Iranto face prosecution in 2022 for inflaming and disrupting “the psychological safety of the community.”
No filmmaker reached quite the level of infamy with theirown nation as Yilmaz Güney, who split duties as a political activist and underground director. Of Kurdish descent,Güney quickly became acquainted with the oppressive Turkish government at the time, as he was sentenced to seven years in prison as a law and economics student in Istanbul for spreading “communist propaganda,” but the conviction was appealed. In Turkey, there was hardly any separation between government and art, as the country’s theaters curated state-sanctioned melodramas, war films, and adaptations of plays. By the late 1950s, Yeşilçam, the Turkish studio system, began welcoming more intimate and gritty portraits of everyday life.
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Atıf Yılmaz, a left-wing director, cast Güney in a film,TheChildren of the Fatherland. Not long after, Güney emerged as a prominent Turkish movie star, appearing in 20 films per year until he was forced to serve his reduced sentence in 1961. Upon release, he parlayed his experience and activismto become an auteur himself. Under his own production company,Güney established creative autonomy, making movies about the downtrodden people of Turkey, often characterized as rebels struggling against the mighty in films likeRecep from Kasımpaşa.
His rise as a filmmaker coincided with theradical cinematic movementsacross the globe that tackled controversial subjects and broke all the formalist conventions, from the French New Wave and New Hollywood.Hope, released in 1971, about a cab driver embarking on a quest for a mythical lost treasure, is considered Güney’s breakthrough achievement,a dazzling blend of a gritty character drama with Italian neorealism.Elia KazanpraisedHopeas “poetic” and a unique film without an ounce of imitation that “had risen out of a village environment.”
Yilmaz Güney Escaped Prison and Accepted a Palme d’Or
By the early ’70s, Güney had ostensibly spent asmuch time behind barsas he did behind a camera. Some incarcerations, occurring amid a coup by the Turkish military, would only last a week, but most would see him locked up for about a year. Following his conviction for association with revolutionary groups, Güney was arrested and convicted for the murder of a right-wing judge in 1974. The details of this crime are vague, and hiscontroversial convictionis understood to be suspicious. During this time, the newly empowered military junta banned Güney’s films. Still, being possibly wrongfully accused didn’t hinder his creative brain. While imprisoned, Güney, along with various collaborators, wrote his most acclaimed film,Yol. Directed bySerif Goren,Yolwent on towin the Palme d’Orin 1982, sharing the award withCosta-Gavras' political thriller,Missing.
Güney’s story doesn’t end there. Although he couldn’t direct his script, he managed to accept the Palme d’Or in person. Mind you, he was not released on parole, but rather,he escaped prison. Güney’s escape, however, was nothing likeThe Great EscapeorThe Shawshank Redemption,as all he did was simply walk out of the facility.Because of the relaxed guarding, Güney was convinced that the government wanted him to escape so they could later exile him from Turkey. There’s no telling what direction his life would’ve taken following winning Cannes' top prize as a fugitive, but a year later, Güney suddenly died from cancer at 47 years old. In all likelihood, we’ll never see a career trajectory as dynamic and unpredictable as Yilmaz Güney.
Yol (The Road)is available to buy on Amazon in the U.S.
