Beyond the Hill (Tepenin Ardı)

Tepenin Ardı (Beyond the Hill) is the first feature film written and directed by Emin Alper, a historian and film critic. This 94-minute Turkish-Greek co-production opened in Turkey on December 14, 2012. Its subject is macho male culture, and it tells a tense family tragedy with the look of a Western. The producers are Enis Kostepen and Seyfi Teoman, who died young.

Nusret takes his two sons, one gentle and one wild, to his father's farm for a change of air. The elder, Zafer, has withdrawn since military service; his brother is an unruly youth. The grandfather, Faik, complains about the goat herds that roam around his farm and the shepherds who own them. A gunshot from nowhere, and what follows, destroys the farm's peace. The film examines a dominant male culture that invents an enemy and a scapegoat rather than face its own problems. Tamer Levent, Reha Özcan, Mehmet Özgür and Berk Hakman share the leading roles.

Filming took place in the Ermenek district of Karaman. The film won the Caligari Prize in Berlin and the Golden Tulip and FIPRESCI awards in Istanbul and the Asia Pacific Screen Award for best feature film. The magazine Kampfplatz devoted a dossier to it in its third issue.