Haze (Pus)

Tayfun Pirselimoğlu wrote and directed Pus, his third feature and a Turkish drama from 2010. It premiered at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival (February 11-21, 2010) and reached Turkish cinemas on May 28, 2010. Abroad it is known as Haze.

The story follows Reşat, who lives with his mother in the outskirts of Istanbul. Played by Ruhi Sarı, he is a withdrawn, odd young man who gets by on bootleg DVD work and almost never speaks to his mother. Only the girl next door and the hope of owning a motorbike interest him. Fond of pointless petty theft, Reşat takes a package left by Celal, a friend of his boss. When Celal is murdered the same day, the question of what the package holds drags Reşat into a dark chain of events. Besides Ruhi Sarı, the cast includes Serkan Keskin, Bahar Yanılmaz and Mehmet Avcı.

The film tries to capture the slow, quiet tempo of life on the city's edge. One critic noted that a 24-page script had been stretched to about 110 minutes, argued that the characters do not behave like real people from such neighborhoods, and saw the film as an attempt to tell a Zeki Demirkubuz-style story through Nuri Bilge Ceylan-style cinema. Audience ratings were low as well.