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SHORT SYNOPSIS
Close-up of an astronaut’s face. The astronaut is Cemal. Kenan dubs home videos
for a living. In a classroom, kindergarten teacher Suzan weeps frantically. They are the sons and daughter of Mazhar. Now, after being 30 years apart, their father calls them back home to their village of Hasanlar. They don’t know why. When they arrive to Hasanlar, they realise that their father is dead and in his will he asks to be buried when the butterflies come to the village to die; one of the many strangeness of this village. Three siblings who neither know each other nor anything about their father will have to kill time in this village while waiting for the time of the butterflies. As they start to find out more about their father and about each other, they also start to know more about themselves.
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DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
Mazhar is dead; Mazhar Candan was my uncle and a poet, he died. My mother will die, my grandmother will die, my father will die, I will die. They’re still alive, I’m still alive, Mazhar Candan was my uncle and a poet and he died. He made me enjoy Odyssey when I was 9 years old. We took a journey through the kingdoms which Herodotus told about. When I was 11, he introduced me with Mayakovski and Yesenin. When I was 13, he said “Aysel, go away, I’m not the one for you”. My favorite poem of his started as “The sun sets, “maestro” silenced everyone with a shaky voice, holding one hand up like an actor”. Everyone remained silent and listened to him as he talked. As far back as I can remember, he used to say “this is my last year”. He said this for 20 years. That scared me when I was a kid; later on I just smiled it just made me smile. He wouldn’t die and I would smile. Until three years ago. I didn’t become aware of his death. One day my maternal uncle invited me over for lunch, saying “Mazhar and I are waiting for you”. I saw my maternal uncle and Mazhar, and sat across them. As I lifted my head up, I saw it was Hasan not Mazhar sitting next to my uncle. That day I realized Mazhar had died. I felt a knot in my throat, I could not breathe. I left the table without saying anything. I misheard him. He said Hasan, I heard Mazhar. I dragged myself to the street and cried for Mazhar for the first time, that day. When I went home I started thinking about death. Mazhar was gone and it hurt me. I pictured in my mind the faces of everyone I loved. One by one, I made them say “this is my last year” in my head. Then I sent them all to Hasanlar Village. This is how Hasanlar Village came to be and gave birth to its characters. I’m 35 years old. I feel like death is still far away. While I still feel stronger than death, I wanted to write a comedy where death is a character but not significant enough to be the lead. At Mazhar’s funeral I gave a speech and said “He always wanted to be an underground poet; he finally is”. No one laughed, but I thought it was funny. And I’m sure Mazhar was there and he also found it funny.
I wrote this movie to make Mazhar smile.
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FILMMAKERS
TOLGA KARAÇELİK directed two feature films and several award winning shorts. His debut film Toll Booth screened on festivals around the world winning thirteen awards including best first film, best actor and best cinematography at Turkey’s important film festival Golden Orange. The movie was screened at prestigious venues such as MOMA New York and Smithsonian. His second film Ivy premiered in Sundance and was shown at more than thirty festivals so war including prestigious festivals like Toronto, Karlovy Vary, Sao Paolo, Sydney. Ivy had been awarded more than 20 awards world wide including Best Film at East End Film festival of London and Best Film, Best director, Best script, Best Actor at Golden Orange and Best director and best actor at Adana Film Festival. Tolga Karaçelik was jury at Karlovy Film Festival’s East West Competition 2016. He is currently working on his next film Butterflies.
DİLOY GÜLÜN was born in Istanbul, graduated from Istanbul University Conservatory Violin department in 1988, received her BA degree from Bogazici University Economics Department in 1992 and Diplôme d’accès aux études universitaires from Sorbonne Paris 1 in 1995. She started working as production assistant in IFR in 1996. In 2001, she produced Ahmet Ulucay’s “Making Boats out of Watermelon Rinds” which won 8 awards in several international festivals. She founded Karma Films in 2003 and line produced several feature films including “Inferno” (Ron Howard / Sony Pictures), Taken 2 (Olivier Megaton / Europacorp), The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Mira Nair / Cine Mosaic), The International (Tom Tykwer / Sony Pictures), Narrow Frame of Midnight (Tala Hadid / Autonomous UK) and many others as well as documentaries and over 200 commercials. For more information: www.karma-films.com
METİN ANTER started his career as director of Trimark Pictures International Production and Sales between 1996-2000. He settled in Turkey and founded Chantier Films in 2001 in the field of cinema film production and distribution. While bringing foreign productions to Turkey, Chantier Films has always aimed to offer high quality and successful productions to filmlovers and to undertake production of movies which will bring sound both in our country and abroad. His producer & distributor credits include Sofra Sırları/2017, Housewife/2017, Mihrez: Cin Padişahı/2015, Oh My God /2009, Son Buluşma/Last Meeting/2007
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For full cast & crew, please visit:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt7318202/fullcredits...
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JOIN OUR COMMUNITY
We believe the only way for a unique film like this to get out into the world is with a strong community. This is why we have chosen to launch an Indiegogo campaign. The money that we raise will supplement our post-production. music and film festival costs. The film is currently in Turkish with English subtitles. The more we raise, the more subtitles we can add in other languages!
More important than the money, we want to build a community of people who care about each other's creative work. While it gets more and more challenging to produce an independent (but really independent!) film, we highly value our colleagues', friends' and families' support. Without Ministry of Culture Fund, with no foreign partner, we could only rely on our own money and our entourage who believed in us. We couldn't come to this far without them. We will be grateful if you decide to join our community!
We will be posting regular updates about "BUTTERFLIES - KELEBEKLER" and encourage you to check back for behind-the-scenes videos and more stories we are dying to share!