YELLOW LETTERS | GELBE BRIEFE

GERMANY, TURKEY, FRANCE  | 2026 | COLOR | DCP | 127’ | TURKISH
The Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival was awarded (by Wim Wenders, chairman of the jury) to the director who, three years ago, was nominated for an Oscar for the outstanding “The Teacher’s Lounge”, which was met enthusiastically during its Greek premiere in 2023 AIFF. His new film tells the story of a couple of intellectual Turkish artists who see their lives change dramatically and their marriage put to the test when they find themselves in the government’s crosshairs, are blacklisted and forced to abandon the comforts and everything they had taken for granted. Similar to his previous film, the director confronts the characters and the audience with difficult moral dilemmas, questioning, incisively and lucidly, everyone’s duty to themselves and their beliefs in the shadow of an authoritarian world order. Filmed (out of necessity) outside Turkey, “Yellow Letters” is nonetheless the most politically charged and explosive film produced by the country in recent years. Loukas Katsikas

DIRECTOR: İlker Çatak
SCREENWRITERS: İlker Çatak, Ayda Çatak, Enis Köstepen
DoP: Judith Kaufmann
MUSIC: Marvin Miller
EDITOR: Gesa Jäger
PRINCIPAL CAST: Özgü Namal, Tansu Biçer, Leyla Smyrna Cabas, İpek Bilgin

İLKER ÇATAK

German director of Turkish origin, born in 1984. He returned as a boy to Istanbul where he attended secondary school. Afterwards he went back to Germany, where he studied Film and Television in Berlin and Hamburg. In 2005 he started working in short film and Advertising. Co-founder of 24LiesPerSecond production company.

FILMOGRAPHY
2026 Yellow Letters
2023 The Teacher’s Lounge
2021 Stambul Garden
2019 I Was, I Am, I Will Be
2017 Once Upon a Time… Indianerland