Drama - Comedy

Somersault In A Coffin

Synopsis:
Tabutta Rovasata (Somersault In A Coffin) is the true but allegorical story of a car thief who steals to keep himself warm during cold winter nights. Mahsun SUPERTITIZ is homeless and unemployed.


He lives in Rumelihisari (one of the most picturesque and oldest quarters of Istanbul), and tries to stay alive with the help of local fishermen. Mahsun loves cars, he steals at nights and in the mornings he drives them back clean and well kept. He lives to emphasize the strange togetherness of possibilities and impossibilities.


In this togetherness, Mahsun experiences friendship, trust, a one-way love affair and torture. He insists to survive in his open-air coffin of ancient Istanbul streets.

Director’s Note:
Tabut (Coffin) is a small place, confining a person only to his own dimensions. Istanbul, as the most cosmopolitan city in Turkey, especially famous with its striking contrasts, encircles diverse lifestyles, extremely rich and dirt poor.


In this harsh atmosphere, people are built with surprising skills to balance everything around their lives, as well as with wild stubbornness to refuse to do the “right thing” and totally let go of themselves.

Year:

1996

Written and Directed By:

Derviş Zaim

Cast:

Ahmet Uğurlu • Tuncel Kurtiz • Ayşen Aydemir • Fuat Onar • Şerif Erol • Hasan Uzma • Nadi Güler • Barış Celiloğlu

Producer:

Ezel Akay • Derviş Zaim

Director Of Photography:

Mustafa Kuşçu

Art Director:

Aslı Kurnaz

Production Managers:

Bülent Güneri • Derviş Zaim

Makeup:

Aslı Kurnaz

Editing:

Mustafa Preşeva

Assistant Director:

Nur Arık

Music:

Babı-ı Esrar, Zen

POSTERS

PHOTOS

BEHIND THE SCENES

Trailers and Clips

Watch

If you wish, you can watch it by purchasing or renting on itunes.

FROM MEDIA

INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
ACKBAR ABBAS - ESSAYS (CINEMATIC CITIES: ISTANBUL AND HONG KONG)

Borges, the Argentinian writer and a devotee of both cities and cinema, once said: ‘The Picture of the city that we carry in our minds is always slightly out of date’ (‘Doctor Brodie’s report’). That is bacuse cities also move; they are exorbitant. The great promise of cinema şs that şt does not have to give us ‘pictures’ of the city, though this promise is not always kept. Admittedly, there will always be recidivist films that use the city as mere setting, and that close down the movement of cities and images by drawing on recognizable urban landmarks as stable points of reference. By contrast, the cinematic city is neither securely  graspable nor fully representable. Calvino describes it as an invisible, Benjamin as phantasmagoric, Borges as labyrinthine. It is as much as physical presence as it is an idea and dream. For example, the Istanbul of Dervis Zaim’s ‘Somersault In A Coffin’, in spite of the many shots taken in the open air, is a claustrophobic presence, a secret antogonist…As dream and idea, the cinematic city is everywhere and nowhere, a space that manages to be both claustrophobic and agoraphobic, center and periphery, at the same time.

STEPHEN KINZER – THE NEW YORK TIMES 20.11.1997

A gritty film about Turks who have been left behind by their country’s economic boom may have set record for the greatest cinematic return on its investment.

The film ‘Somersault In A Coffin’, was shot last year for an astonishing 15 000 usd. Only hours after post production has finished, a print was flown to Antalya, Turkey, and entered in the prestigious film festival there. It won four awards, including best picture, and then went on to win six more prizes at other Turkish festivals.

Now ‘Somersault In A Coffin’ has been shown at several foreign festivals, a rare honour for a Turkish film.

TURKISH MEDIA
VECDİ SAYAR (CUMHURİYET – DAILY NEWSPAPER)

…Can you jump or somersault in a coffin? You say ‘no!’ Yet, you are doing this everyday. You manage to stay on your feet in the most impossible conditions. You have an extraordinary resistance. You are a Turkish person. I mean you are miracle.

Dervis Zaim, born in 1964, has endeavored to tell about this miracle. With a maturity unexpected from his age, he has run a face that Turkish movie makers could not fully succeed in. He did not neglect the background, the philosophical structure of the story he tells. With humbleness. Without overstating. He was set to tell about this Turkish people. A plain, warm, story within a realistic atmosphere.

ALİ ULVİ UYANIK 5 Ekim 1996

…A teahouse that shelters losers… And an immense hunger for love, loneliness. Hop efor life that is never lost against all odds…Clinging to life.

Watch Dervis Zaim attentively. He has caught a warm, fervesnt benevolence in the cold, in the ice cold without overstatements, with a sparing language, with a sensitive narrative style and functional editing, music work..

MEHMET AÇAR SİNEMA DERGİSİ (SINEMA MONTHLY MAGAZINE)

…After it was made by a zero budegt, Somersault In A Coffin …was received an award no one anticipated at the backyard of Turkish cinema establishment…You have given hope to and spirited the newcomers.

TUNCA ARSLAN (RADIKAL – DAILY NEWSPAPER)

…We have got nothing to do except bowing with respect and taking off our hats at the succesful acting of Ahmet Ugurlu in personating the oppressed, the wounded and the outcast…In short, Somersault In A Coffin is a great movie undertaken by a humble team…

SUNGU ÇAPAN (CUMHURİYET DAILY NEWSPAPER – 22.11.1996)

Derviş Zaim, who picks up his theme from his own life experiences, who resorts to his own observations and diverts his camera toward the ‘colorful subject-matters of the street’; like director who has 40 years of experience behind him, sets up the dramatic structure while presenting his characters within the first half-an-hour, and then goes on to tying the knots of the corner-stone relationships of Mahsun’s struggle in the movie which we flow into with the accompany of a rhythmic and deep-toned music. This humanitarian, warm and realistic movie that never lose its ‘reality’ even at the most far-fetched, fantastic scenes is surely a fresh breath in our cinema.

Reflecting the reality with all its plainness, ‘Somersault In A Coffin’ gets the upper hand from the beginning to the end through its objective, well balanced, realistic approach that does not neglect the details and, makes good use of the location and the setting without resorting to ostentation or cheap tricks.

Next Film