Competition : “Three Monkeys” by Nuri Belge Ceylan

A familiar name in Cannes, – he presented the short Cocoon in 1995 and feature films Distant in 2003 and Climates in 2006, all in Competition – Nuri Bilge Ceylan is back on the Croisette with a dramatic feature entitled Three Monkeys. With a plot loaded with the violence of complicated events, the Turkish director focuses on the four-member family, who want desperately to stay together by not confronting the truth, thus qualifying the film as a fable like ‘three monkeys’ from which the title was drawn.

On the origins for this film, the director relates:
“Since the beginning of my early youth, what most intrigued, perplexed and at the same time scared me, has been the realization of that unprecedented wide scope of what goes on in the human psyche. It has always astonished me to see in the human soul the coexistence of the power to rule and the potential to forgive, the interest in the most holy and that of the lowest banality, and love and hate. For this reason, dealing with the qualities of our inner world which cannot be formulated rationally and trying to comprehend it, has always been the foremost reason for me in making films.
The film aims to present that kind of emotional and psychological event evolving between four main characters. We have tried to dramatize the abstract thoughts, beliefs and conceptual conflicts which deeply engage our minds by personifying them in these characters.”