EXCLUSIVE: Screen can unveil the first trailer for Turkish filmmaker Emin Alper’s Salvation (Kurtuluş) ahead of its world premiere in the Berlin Film Festival’s competition.
Set in a remote village high in the Turkish mountains, Salvation tracks the return of an exiled clan that reignites a decades-old land feud. The local clan chief’s brother has unsettling visions he believes to be divine warnings and starts to challenge his sibling’s leadership as religious convictions, power struggles and tensions surge in the community.
Salvation is inspired by the true story of 12 members of one family in a village in the Kurdish region of Türkiye who raided a wedding in 2009 and killed 44 people including women and children. While inspired by the real-life event, Alper told Screen that “the characters and side stories are entirely fictional.”
He explained: “The event has haunted me since the day it happened. However, as political conditions shifted in my country and across the world, I became convinced that this story wasn’t just about a local issue. It speaks to the broader danger of authoritarian leaders dragging their people toward catastrophe, I began writing the script only after I was certain of its global relevance, and that relevance has only intensified in time.”
Alper added: “This story is my modest warning about how easily that threshold can be crossed.”
Salvation is the first Turkish production selected for Berlin’s main competition in seven years, following Alper’s A Tale of Three Sisters in 2019.
The film is produced by Turkey’s Liman Film and co-produced by France’s Meltem Films and TS Productions, the Netherlands’ Circe Films & Kaap Holland and Greece’s Horsefly Films. Bir Film also co-produces and will release in Turkey. Lucky Number is handling international sales.
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