22/09/2026 - Yeşim Ustaoğlu crafts a film at once profound and prosaic, realistic and poetic, in the form of a road movie painting a portrait of a woman in search of restorative freedom

"What wind carried you to these arid lands?" Following in the wake of a thirtysomething poet in crisis, who abruptly breaks away from her life as a partner and a mother to hit the road with no particular destination in mind, the audience finds itself swept away by Yeşim Ustaoğlu’s new and staggeringly beautiful film, What Remains, which was unveiled in competition at the 74th San Sebastián Film Festival (where the Turkish filmmaker triumphed in 2008 with Pandora’s Box). Depicting a solitary journey which pulls the protagonist out of her suffocating urban cocoon - with repercussions for the rest of her small family – and which is presented through a masterfully crafted, gravitas-imbued dual perspective, the director is thoroughly at ease capturing atmospheres, landscapes, gestures and faces through an incisive, sensory approach.

"I’m trapped here (…) I can’t make peace with this place (…) I’m broken." Poet Elif (Öykü Karayel) can no longer conceal the burden that’s crushing her: her life in Istanbul with Mehmet (Metin Akdülger) and their six-year-old son Selim (Ali Kayra Kul) has become unbearable. Should she move to Berlin, as her husband suggests? "My problem is the city, and cities are the same everywhere." In the throes of depression, torn between her painful inner turmoil and the power of maternal love, not to mention her uncertain feelings for Mehmet (a musician and musicology teacher inspired by Murray Schafer and John Cage) which have become mired in an economically precarious marital routine, Elif is on the verge of collapse. So she leaves and hits the road at random, while Mehmet is called to his dying father’s bedside in Trabzon, taking Selim along with him…

Dropping clever clues and incorporating three suggestive encounters with women into Elif’s peregrinations, which eventually lead her to the snow-covered village of Avcilar (in the country’s mountainous east), the screenplay gradually sheds light on the story’s three circles: the protagonist’s intimate, empathetic path to reconnecting with herself (embellished by Birhan Keskin’s gorgeous poems), Mehmet’s reconciliation with the karmic secrets of his past, and a fragmentary, background portrait of provincial Turkey grappling with the harsh nature of life. This subtly resonant web (electrified by intense face-offs) results in a film which is bold, full of life (buoyed by excellent dialogue) and benevolent beneath its classic veneer, a film which creates its own melody, rhythm and texture, and which exquisitely captures nature’s immutable power ("desolation and silence, calm and what remains of it") and the ups and downs of human nature. As one of the poems puts it, "the whole of the world can be found in the tiniest of my particles", and Yeşim Ustaoğlu captures this notion to perfection in exploring this crossroads in one woman’s life.

What Remains was produced by the Turkish company Ustaoglu Film together with France’s Cité Films, Luxembourg’s Tarantula and Bulgaria’s RFF International, in co-production with MUBI, Pak Ventures and Yuvision. The Mach Factory are handling international sales.

(Translated from French)