Edge of Night, the debut feature by German-Turkish director Türker Süer, neatly fulfils three demands that make a respectable thriller: there’s an impossible conflict at the centre, splintering an immediate family; large passages occur in a moving vehicle, bombing forward in one direction as the plot’s own momentum should; and it’s set across a highly compressed time span, here around 48 hours, creating a nicely literal “ticking clock”. That it integrates commentary on Turkey’s civil unrest in the Erdoğan era is another achievement, and it bundles over the finish line in 85 minutes, despite carrying the strain of all this effort. Not bad at all for a first feature premiering in Venice’s audience-focused Orizzonti Extra strand and subsequently showing in Toronto’s Centrepiece section.

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Don’t imitate the old “American movie trailer”-style voice-over, but Süer – also taking on sole screenwriting duties – embraces the relative cliché of two brothers, on opposite sides of the law, on a road to ruin, etc, etc. Yet he allows such a classic moral dilemma, of betraying innate family loyalty, to be a fair dramatic engine powering the film’s other elements. Captain Sinan Yeşilyaprak (Ahmet Rıfat Şungar, who acted for Nuri Bilge Ceylan in The Wild Pear Tree [+lire aussi :
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interview : Zeynep Ozbatur
fiche film]) has been entrusted to escort his brother Kenan (Berk Hakman), another military official, for incarceration in Ankara, after he assaulted a superior at a base, deserted and attempted to flee the country. But the loyal, if too trusting, Sinan is unaware that he’s a pawn in a larger plot by his superior Colonel Demirkan (Ahmet Kaynak), who wants further confirmation of the Captain’s allegiance to the “fatherland”, after he once testified against his own father, a decorated General also charged with treason.

This crucible of a damaged military family is menaced by a further disruption. Whilst the film’s co-production links Germany with Turkey, and Süer himself was born, raised and now primarily works in the former country, the finer rationale for the July 2016 coup against the legitimately elected government will be well understood in those two countries, and perhaps less precisely so for those outside. Yet Süer’s confident unveiling of the plot puts wider machinations as well as the audience’s own foreknowledge in stark contrast with Sinan’s belated grasping of the situation, amid surprising revelations on the accused and accuser’s partisanship, with the overall military chain of command upturned, as in the typical nature of these coups internationally.

Ultimately, the fact that the country’s political upheavals render blood ties irrelevant is Süer’s wider and more spiritual conclusion, making his thriller mechanics amount to a serious message, akin to The Seed of the Sacred Fig [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] from this year; that the filmmaker incorporates real news footage filling out the background of his main dramatic locations further invites this comparison. Still, some impact is blighted by the heavy-handedness of some later-stage expository dialogue, and how we realise the brotherly conflict he’s carefully set up is in service to more metaphorical undertones and significance. And the sharpness and concision of its length could otherwise be seen as over-abruptness. But this is still really impressive work, often made with real visual panache and muscular command of tension and tone, which shows Süer’s potential to hold audiences in his dramatic grip in projects to come. 

Edge of Night is a co-production by Germany and Turkey, staged by MFP GmbH and Liman Film. Its world sales are handled by The Match Factory.