Tepenin Ardi (Beyond the Hill)

We watch the story of a very male dominant family living in an almost deserted large land that mainly belongs to the grandfather character.

The main question in the film is; who is the enemy that we have to fight with?

“The enemy lives beyond that hill”; keeps saying the grandfather. But he doesn’t really know who the enemy is. He is just very prepared to create the illusion of the enemy in his head and fight it with all the rifles he owns. He is completely unaware, or maybe ignorant, of all the misgoings in his family. His focus is on the enemy beyond the hill that we never see.

The enemy suspected by the very sane grandfather character is actually no different than the enemy delusion his not very sane grandson has, who is going through a severe depression due to the things happened during his mandatory military duty.

The film depicts a great example of a society that creates scapegoats rather than dealing with their own internal problems. It also shows how such a society, in turn, makes their people fight with things that they have no clue what and why they are fighting for and the price paid for this meaningless fight is usually their own blood.

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The grandfather has two sons; Nusret and Mehmet. While the enemy we don’t know keeps living hidden beyond the hill; Nusret’s young son shoots the dog of Mehmet’s son, Nusret rapes Mehmet’s wife, and someone shoots Nusret from his leg. However, nobody has a clear idea of what is actually going on. Except for Nusret’s young son and Mehmet’s son, nobody knows who shoots the dog. Actually, even we as an audience don’t see who shoots the dog, we only guess that it’s Nusret’s son. Nobody knows Nusret raping his brother’s wife except for Nusret, the wife, and us. And nobody knows who shoots Nusret, it’s only suspected by us that Mehmet’s son might have realized the rape and might be the one who shoots his uncle.

The grandfather, though, suspects the enemy beyond the hill of all the shootings. So he goes and shoots some of enemy’s goats. In turn, there happens another shooting that we don’t know from where and by whom again. And as a result, a member of the family is lost.

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While going home right after the film with my very beloved college roommate, she asked me to summarize the film in one sentence, which is like a little game between us that we play after each film we saw together. And below is what I told her for this film.

We keep fighting with things, but we do not really know what they are.