Yol (1982) review

Prisoners at the İmralı prison in Turkey are granted leave for a week - which would never happen in America - and several of them try to sort their lives out: Seyit Ali (Tarık Akan) visits his sick mother and learns his wife Zine (Şerif Sezer) left him, Mehmet Salih (Halil Ergün) is still blamed for the death of his brother, Ömer (Necmettin Çobanoğlu) discovers his Kurdish village is under attack by soldiers and Mevlüt (Hikmet Çelik) takes his fiancée out for a stroll, but they're followed by two women to make sure nothing "impure" happens ... and later, he goes to a brothel.  Considering the political climate at the time and the fact that screenwriter Güney was incarcerated, it's amazing that this was made at all, and while the movie leaps around to cover its main characters' adventures and is sometimes a little tough to follow (for me at least), there's a dark poetry to the proceedings.  One particularly sad moment is when Mehmet and his spouse attempt to have sexual relations in a bathroom on a train but they're immediately interrupted by the other passengers and then they're detained by the authorities: genuine intimacy is forbidden.  The Turkey of the 21st century doesn't seem to be a much "warmer" place with Erdoğan, who's been described as an anti-Semite, a bigot, a misogynist and a dictator.  No wonder the Turks smoke such strong cigarettes....