Hope (Umut) (translated)

Umut is a 1970 Turkish black-and-white drama film written, directed, produced by and starring Yılmaz Güney. Güney plays Cabbar, an impoverished horse-cab driver struggling to support his wife, elderly mother and five children in a shantytown, whose only hope lies in the lottery tickets he keeps buying. When one of his horses is killed after being struck by a car and he cannot afford a replacement, Cabbar is persuaded by the porter Hasan to join a search for a mythical lost treasure, blessed by a holy man. The cast also includes Tuncel Kurtiz, Gülsen Alnıaçık, Osman Alyanak and Enver Dönmez.

Regarded as the first realist film of Turkish cinema, Umut was banned by Turkey's Film Control Commission at the time of its making. It nevertheless won five awards at the 2nd Adana Golden Boll Film Festival, was screened at the Cannes Film Festival, and a restored version appeared in the Classics section of the 2015 Venice Film Festival, when it was also named the best Turkish film of the century by the Turkish Film Critics Association.