Catak has emerged as a darling of the Berlin International Film Festival after winning the Golden Bear this year. Opening on a blood-red image, Yellow Letters tells the story of an actress and her family who find themselves in trouble after falling afoul of the regime. The absurd situation in which a character who cries out, “May darkness come!” onstage is confronted with darkness in real life, undermining the claim that ‘art can save the world.’ Perhaps for this reason, the film looks beyond the crisis of a particular intellectual to focus on how human beings carry on with their lives when confronted with unjust circumstances. The fact that the film was shot in German cities but sets its story in Ankara and Istanbul, Turkiye, also speaks to this aspiration toward universality. Catak’s filmmaking has been moving in an increasingly serious direction, and this film showcases his gift for drawing drama out of tension and anxiety. Within the film, at the entrance to a university the words ‘GOD HELP’ appear. Does help come from human beings themselves, or is it sought through reliance on God? For those who face a choice from a position of weakness, there are no roses.
İlker Çatak was born in Berlin, Germany in 1984 and grew up in Istanbul before studying film directing in Berlin and Hamburg. He made a name for himself with I Was, I Am, I Will Be (2019), which won the Bronze German Film Award for Best Feature Film. The Teachers′ Lounge (2023) won the Berlinale′s Label Europa Cinemas Award and the German Film Award for Best Feature Film, and was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature. His latest film, Yellow Letters, about a theater couple who lose their jobs amid Turkey′s authoritarian crackdown, won the Golden Bear at the 2026 Berlinale — the first time in 22 years that a German-born director had taken the festival′s top prize, since Fatih Akin′s Head-On (2004).
From Busan International Film Festival 2026, No. 31
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