Cannes 2014: Nuri Bilge Ceylan criticises Turkish government over mine disaster

Turkish film director Nuri Bilge Ceylan has expressed his dismay that no one has yet resigned from Turkey's government over the Soma mine disaster. Speaking on Saturday at a press conference at the Cannes film festival following the premiere of his new film Winter Sleep, Ceylan said: "In Japan, when someone dies [in an industrial accident], someone steps down. In Turkey this is not the case. I don't know why, perhaps it is a cultural difference."

Ceylan and his cast and crew all wore black ribbons to commemorate the Soma disaster, which has claimed the lives of over 300 miners, and which happened on the day before Cannes opened. They were also photographed holding up signs reading "#soma" on the red carpet prior to the Winter Sleep premiere.

However, Ceylan denied his film was making any specific political comment, either to the current protests against Turkey's prime minister ‪Recep Tayyip Erdoğan‬, or the unrest in Istanbul in the summer of 2013. Ceylan said: "Our film was written before the events of June last year … I may come back to it in three years time. When I make a film I don't think about the current situation. The duty of a film-maker is not that of a journalist; the director should be more interested in the soul of the spectator."
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Winter Sleep is Ceylan's fifth feature to screen at Cannes, and he has never come away without an award. Both Uzak (Distant) and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia won the second-place Grand Prix, in 2002 and 2011 respectively; Climates won the Fipresci award in 2006; and Three Monkeys won best director in 2008. A character drama inspired by Chekhov's short stories, Winter Sleep centres on retired actor Aydin who runs a hotel in a remote part of Anatolia, and his difficult relationship with his wife, his sister, and local villagers. Aydin, rather improbably, is played by Haluk Bilginer, who had a four year run in TV soap Eastenders in the late 80s as Turkish Cypriot crook Mehmet Osman.

While the spectacular Cappadocian landscape, and its distinctive cave-houses, forms a remarkable back drop to his film, Ceylan said that he had only reluctantly used it as a location. "I actually didn't want to use it," he said, "but I had to. I originally wanted a very simple, plain place, but the film had to be set in a tourist area, and I needed a hotel that is a little isolated, outside of town. Cappadocia was the only place I could find that in the winter time still had tourists."

"I was afraid of shooting in Cappadocia because it might have been too beautiful, too interesting. But I didn't show it too much, I hope."