Netherlands Production Platform - Nederlands Film Festival

Our Grand
Despair
(Bizim büyük caresizligimiz)
Bulut Film
Turkey
Director Seyfi Teoman
Producer Nadir Operli
16 • NPP 2008
Synopsis
Ender and Çetin are two middle-aged men
who have been close friends since high
school. Çetin returns to Ankara, having left to
study and work many years before. The two
realise their youthful dream and Çetin moves
in with Ender, who has never left Ankara.
While on holiday in Turkey to visit his
family, Fikret, their close friend from high
school who lives in the US, has a car accident
with his parents. They are killed and
Fikret is injured. He has to return to the US
so he asks whether his sister, Nihal, can
stay with Ender and Çetin until she finishes
her university degree in two years time.
At first, Ender and Çetin are annoyed by
the presence of a third party just when their
dream of living together has come true. Nihal
cannot get over the trauma of losing her parents
and she does not want to communicate
with them. After a while, however, they begin
to get used to each other: sharing the same
house draws the three closer and they soon
enjoy spending time together.
While Nihal establishes an intellectual
relationship with Ender, who works as a translator
at home during the day, she builds a
more everyday relationship with Çetin, who is
an engineer. The inevitable happens: Ender
and Çetin, who seem to be caring, protective
and calm, and who act like Nihal’s parents in
an effort to release her from the troubles she
has gone through, fall in love with her, each
unaware of the other’s feelings.
This gives them both the chance to look
back on their lives, the intimate friendship
between them, the myth of their common
past, the lost years of their youth, the
women in their lives, their dreams and
expectations about old age - in fact, to
assess almost everything…
At the end of the first year, Nihal goes to
the US to visit Fikret for the summer vacation.
Ender and Çetin take a trip together
and confess their love for Nihal to each
other. When Nihal returns at the end of summer,
they put a certain distance between
them and her because of their guilty consciences.
They adopt a paternal attitude to
avoid intimacy.
Meanwhile, Nihal meets a boyfriend at
university. She starts to spend time with him
and does not come home for a while. Then
she gets pregnant. After she arranges an
abortion with the help of Ender and Çetin, her
boyfriend leaves her. In spite of all this, Nihal
manages to graduate and moves to the US to
live with her brother. Ender and Çetin are
finally alone, facing old age in Ankara.
Director Seyfi Teoman
Seyfi Teoman was born in Kayseri, Turkey,
in 1977. After studying economics at
Bogazici University in Istanbul, he lived in
Lodz, Poland, for two years, studying directing
at the Polish National Film School.
He made a short film, Apartment, in
2004, which was screened at several international
film festivals. He directed his first
feature, Summer Book, in September 2007.