Yellow Letters: Turkish theatremakers face state suppression in this politically-charged Golden Bear winner
İlker Çatak’s political drama about an avant garde theatre couple whose family life begins to unravel when their work is targeted by the government has much to say about artistic censorship.
Reviewed from the 2026 Berlin International Film Festival
The theatre – as a setting, a realm – has been usefully deployed by many filmmakers as a political metaphor. Think of All About Eve (1950), which portrays the Broadway theatre world as one maelstrom of backstabbing, conniving competitiveness. Or Dogville (2003), which Lars von Trier purposefully shot on a minimalist wall-less stage set, as a means of literally exposing the absurdity of societal power structures. In Yellow Letters, the latest film from Turkish-German director İlker Çatak, an avant-garde playwright/director and his actress wife find themselves targets of state suppression for their refusal to play the game apparently required of prominent artists in contemporary Turkey. Although Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is never named, his dark shadow looms over the two main characters who quickly lose everything they have attained, everything they have worked for.
Aziz (played by Tansu Biçer), like many artist-intellectuals, also holds down a professorship of dramaturgy at the local university. Shortly after the premiere of his latest piece – where his wife Derya (Özgü Namal) ruffled feathers by refusing to be photographed next to politicians in attendance – he encourages his students to leave the lecture hall where he is teaching to attend the anti-government protest concurrently taking place on campus. “If you haven’t seen the state’s theatrics,” he quips, “I can’t teach you anything about dramaturgy.” A student reports him, and he – alongside the rest of his “troublesome” leftist colleagues – are fired from the university; shortly thereafter, his play is removed from the repertory of the state theatre, and his wife, after speaking truth to power, is ceremoniously fired.
Without means to support themselves and their teenage daughter, the family repairs to Istanbul, where they move in with Aziz’s feminist mother (İpek Bilgin). Here, they attempt to essentially start over again, mid-life and mid-career, with Aziz taking a job as a taxi driver, working night shifts in order to write during the day, essentially living in a state of internal exile, while Derya struggles with the potential compromises – deleting all political social media posts, essentially renouncing her integrity – required by accepting a high-paid acting gig for Turkish television that would enable them to re-attain the family’s former livelihood.
A dinner with extended, more traditional-minded family at the film’s midpoint effectively brings into play all the complex dynamics of modern Turkey: Islam, tradition, machismo in opposition to secularity, progress, feminism. Of course, none of these are resolved one way or the other; Çatak is sophisticated enough to realise that the role of art is to ask questions, not provide answers; and, anyway, how could they, given the Turkish state’s precarious situation, geographically, politically, and economically (in one scene, in which Aziz and Derya attempt to save their home by re-mortgaging it at their bank, they are told that they will be charged exorbitant interest – a new norm in Turkey’s crumbling economy). Finally, their daughter Ezgi (Leyla Smyrna Cabas) begins to act out, her rebellion no doubt indirectly influenced by the stresses exerted on her parents, who are then ironically thrust into the position of having to adapt authoritarian stances towards disciplining her, which puts yet further strain on their marriage.
As the family begins to fall apart, the intention behind the state’s divide-and-conquer tactics announces itself. Much of the film, it must be admitted, is carried by Namal’s excellent performance – some of the best acting that was on display at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, where Yellow Letters took home the top prize. As she wrestles with the existential dilemmas of being a mother, an actress, an activist, and yet increasingly disempowered in all these roles, we witness the emergence of a burgeoning heroism, a strength that transcends all forms of tyranny – an inner flame that Derya herself might only be dimly aware of.
In a further extension of the theatrical metaphor – as well as an open acknowledgment of the difficulties of making a politically sensitive film in today’s Turkey – the city of Berlin plays Ankara, while Hamburg appears as Istanbul. An unusual, stagey workaround, for sure – as the German cities are nowhere near as picturesque as the Turkish metropoli they stand in for – but the move brings up interesting crosscurrents. The student anti-government protest, for instance, was in fact captured footage of an actual pro-Palestine protest in the German capital. The local situation of Turkey is seen in its wider context of encroaching fascism the world over. We are all, in a sense, actors in the state’s theatrics, whether we want to be cast in these roles or not.