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İtiraf

The Confession (İtiraf)

Movie · 2002 · 11 people

Zeki Demirkubuz wrote and directed the Turkish drama İtiraf (The Confession), produced by Mavi Filmcilik. It is the second film of his Stories About Darkness trilogy, which opens with Yazgı and closes with Bekleme Odası. A singular voice in Turkish cinema, Demirkubuz tells of silence and moral reckoning inside a marriage through one man's eyes. The film was shown in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2002 Cannes Film Festival and opened in Turkey on May 3, 2002.

At its center is Harun, an engineer with a successful career. When he learns that his wife Nilgün has been unfaithful, he chooses to bury the truth rather than pursue it. The secret he cannot bring himself to reveal grows into a heavy burden of pride, suspicion and helplessness. As the moment of admitting what he knows approaches, a single night of reckoning turns into an ever more devastating psychological battle. Taner Birsel and Başak Köklükaya share the leading roles, with İskender Altın and Miraç Eronat also in the cast.

The film runs roughly 100 minutes and members on Beyazperde rate it 4.1 on average, from 221 votes, and some viewers call it Demirkubuz's best work.

DirectorZeki Demirkubuz
Production companyMavi Filmcilik

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Cast

Başak Köklükaya Başak Köklükaya Actor · 52 years old Taner Birsel Taner Birsel Actor · born 1959 İskender Altın Miraç Eronat Gülgün Kutlu Sinan Adiyaman Abdullah Demirkubuz Bal Ertürk Serdar Günaydin Cafer Güngör Tülay Koluçolak

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Through different eyes

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

İtiraf's greatest strength is how stubbornly it confines the story to Harun's point of view. The viewer watches a marriage collapse not from outside but from inside a man who knows the truth and cannot say it, which turns the film into a study of consciousness more than a relationship drama. Its place in Demirkubuz's Stories About Darkness trilogy matters here too: between Yazgı and Bekleme Odası, it is the most narrowed-down form of the theme of conscience and silence. Its selection for Un Certain Regard at Cannes is no surprise. But that intensity does not leave the door open to every viewer; a structure tightening towards a single night of reckoning is cinema that demands patience and attention and deliberately gives you no room to breathe.

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

Harun, at the centre of the film, is a successful engineer: a middle-class man whom society considers to have 'everything in order'. His choice to stay silent instead of pursuing the truth when he learns of the betrayal shows how heavy a burden male pride and the worry of 'what will people say' can become. In this sense İtiraf lets you read marriage as a social contract built on pride, shame and failed communication as much as a personal matter. The film offers no solution and passes no judgement, but it makes plainly visible how the silence inside a home is fed by the mask of respectability outside.

Family Viewer Asks whether the whole household can watch it; cares about humour and heart.

This is not a family film. The subject is infidelity and heavy psychological tension inside a marriage. There is no humour and very few moments of relief. Anyone wanting a pleasant evening with children or grandparents should pick something else. For lovers of heavy, thought-provoking adult drama, though, it is one for grown-ups to watch on their own.

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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