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Gece, Melek ve Bizim Çocuklar

The Night, Angel and Our Children (Gece, Melek ve Bizim Çocuklar)

Movie · 1994 · 15 people

Atıf Yılmaz shot the Turkish drama Gece, Melek ve Bizim Çocuklar ("The Night, Angel and Our Children") in 1993 and released it on 1 April 1994. The script is by Yıldırım Türker. The production company is Yeşilçam Film, and one source also credits Atıf Yılmaz as producer. It runs about 100 minutes. It was made with the support of the General Directorate of Copyrights and Cinema under the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and the Beyoğlu police, Kanal 6 and the Divan Hotel helped with the shoot. The music is by Gökhan Kırdar and the cinematography by İzzet Akay.

The story unfolds at night in the back streets of Istanbul. At its centre is the young Serap; the handsome Hakan, who is both her lover and her "boss", Hakan's wealthy male lover and the ageing Melek are the main figures around her. With them the film follows transgender people, sex workers, drug dealers and gay men, showing the struggle to earn a living and the exclusion of people pushed to the margins of society, all around a theme of love. The settings include nightclubs and gay bars.

Derya Arbaş plays Serap, Deniz Türkali plays Melek and Uzay Heparı plays Hakan. The cast also includes Deniz Atamtürk, Kaan Girgin, Cengiz Sezici and Candan Erçetin.

DirectorAtıf Yılmaz
Production companyYeşilçam Film

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Cast

Derya Arbaş Derya Arbaş Actor · died at 35 Deniz Türkali Uzay Heparı Deniz Atamtürk Kaan Girgin Actor · 59 years old Mehmet Teoman Mustafa Suphi Baltacı Candan Erçetin Ceylan Çaplı Cengiz Sezici Ayten Uncuoğlu Actor · 80 years old Nurettin Şen Bennu Yıldırımlar Serdar Bordanacı Ceyhan Fırat

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Through different eyes

History & Society Lens Asks about the period, the social background and what the work reflects.

The film treats trans people, sex workers and gay men in Istanbul's back streets not as a moral issue but as a question of making a living and being shut out; that is the right place to start if you want to understand lives pushed to the margins. One detail stands out: a production that also shows police raids, made with ministry support, was helped by the Beyoğlu police during the shoot, which looks like an intriguing contradiction. Seen from today, the real question is how far the love story softens this harsh world, and how much of their own voice it leaves the characters.

Cinephile Looks at script, editing and directing choices; keeps a distance from formula films.

Yıldırım Türker's script centres the story on Serap but does not confine the camera to her, drawing a broad panorama of trans women, sex workers, dealers and night-time regulars. That breadth is both the film's strength and its weakness: in trying to show a whole world in all its layers, it may leave too little depth for individual characters. Setting the entire story at night is a sound formal decision; the absence of daylight gives shape to the closed world the characters are trapped in. Relationships such as Hakan being both lover and boss are primed to slide into melodrama, and how well the film keeps its balance there decides whether you read it as a social document or a night-time melodrama.

Yeşilçam Nostalgic A viewer raised on the classics, looking for warm storytelling and strong acting.

Atıf Yılmaz is among the first names that come up when the masters of Turkish cinema are counted, so finding his signature among nightclubs and police raids is unusual for an eye raised on the classics. Love is still at the centre, but the innocence of the neighbourhood romance is gone, replaced by the hardness of survival. This bleak picture may leave anyone seeking the warmth of the old melodramas a little cold. Even so, its effort to look at outcasts with compassion is not far from the moral centre of the best Turkish films.

These are not reader reviews: they are short editorial takes written from different viewer perspectives with AI assistance. Reader reviews are below.

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