CREW
Director: Reis Celik
Screenwriter: Reis Celik
Producer: Anil Celik
SYNOPSIS
Based on a true story. Turkey, 1980. The aftermath of the September 12 military coup. Hundreds of thousands have been detained countrywide; torture and executions are commonplace. Union, association and student organization leaders look for unlawful ways to escape overseas as the intelligence services come after them. In the meantime, an illegal protest is organized, the intelligence services turning a calculated blind eye. When the leaders they’re after show up at the protest, the police and military swoop and arrest most of them. But their key target, a female organization leader (Fatma), gets away. Having eluded arrest, Fatma plans to take a small boat from a nearby cove to the Greek island across the water. Her escape has been set up by Bülent, a trusted friend and fellow activist, who drops her off with Vedat, an acquaintance of the same political persuasion who delivers building materials to construction sites by day. Vedat leads Fatma to a secluded cove where he has arranged for a boat to pick her up — only there’s no sign of the boat. Fatma needs a safe place to wait, so Vedat takes her to the workers’ shack at a hotel construction site he supplies with materials and introduces her as his sister. The hotel is barely a shell: the concrete of the ground-floor ceiling has been laid while on the first floor, timber forms have been erected around clusters of vertical steel beams and wait to be filled with poured concrete. The construction site turns out to be a trap: the intelligence services are in the know. They surround the site and move in. Fatma begins to search for a place to hide in the skeleton building. When the police and military appear, she slips upstairs to the first floor. But here, there are no solid structures apart from the timber forms. Just as she steels herself to jump off the edge, a hand grabs her, pulls a board off one of the timber forms, shoves her inside and nails the board back in place. Fatma now watches events unfold through the gaps in the boards of the cramped column mold. The elderly Well-Digger Hasan, who put her in there, is the only person who knows where she is. Certain that Fatma is lurking somewhere in the construction site, the intelligence chief is incensed at not being able to find her. He vents his frustration at everyone on site, interrogating them brutally one by one. The inquisition takes place on the upper floor, right by the column mold where Fatma is hiding. The interrogation continues all night as Fatma looks on mere centimeters away, aware that her very breathing could give her away. As the hours drag on, she’s introduced to all kinds of human characters. Perhaps the hardest thing is that she’ll find out who blew the whistle on her. But as it turns out, there’s a more painful surprise in store for Fatma when the concrete mixer arrives to fill the column molds in the construction site…