Egoyan to shoot Orhan Pamuk’s Snow

The New cinema of Turkey has taken Europe by storm. The Golden Bear went to Honey by Semih Kaplanoğlu in Berlin 2010, the best director award to Nuri Bilge Ceylan for Three Monkeys in Cannes 2008, retrospectives at festivals in Rotterdam in 2009, a season in Switzerland in 2008 and English books by Gönül Dönmuz-Colin and Asuman Suner. These are recent successes, while for several years now reviews have been organized in London, Boston, Berlin and Nuremberg. It began with debuts by an entire generation of filmmakers born around 1960 and made in the 1990s. They overcame a two-decade long crisis which had started after the fall of the golden era of Yeşilcamu (a studio production of predominantly lavish melodramas) and the attack of video and Western blockbusters on their industry. Today, over 70 films are produced in Turkey annually and domestic commercial productions have taken the first places in rankings for years. The country itself is undergoing fascinating transformations being torn between provincial backwardness and cosmopolitan Istanbul; between Asian tradition and aspirations for Europeanization; between the customs of a Kurdish minority, peoples from the Black Sea and Greeks and Armenians, and the nationalist myth of one Turk.