Meryem

A Turkish drama from 2013, Meryem (Mary) was written and directed by Atalay Taşdiken. His second feature, it echoes his first, Kız Kardeşim Mommo. It reached cinemas on September 20, 2013, and Zeynep Çamcı won best actress for it at that year's Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival.

Meryem, whose beauty is the talk of her small Anatolian town, is married off to Mustafa, the son of a local family who lives in Istanbul, but he returns to the city after a few days and she is left to serve his family. Her mother raised her to believe that a bride who enters her husband's house never goes back. In this husbandless marriage Meryem looks for happiness in a game of acceptance she plays with herself. When Murat, who loved her before his military service, comes back to the village, she is treated as a threat and her father-in-law decides to send her to Istanbul. A different ending awaits everyone. Çamcı and İsmail Hacıoğlu lead, with Zerrin Sümer, Mehmet Usta, İpek Bilgin and Mustafa Uzunyılmaz.

Critic Banu Bozdemir writes that Meryem is painted with great innocence and that her softness toward everything softens the film's course too; she scores it 3.5 out of 5.