MILK /PRESS

14.01.2010
"Süt" - Ein Leben zwischen Milch und Poesie Tasnim
El-Naggar - Gazelle Magazin >>>

14.01.2010
Kino als Lyrik
Josef Schnelle - Deutschlandfunk >>>

14.01.2010
Umbruch
Kira Taszman - Neues Deutschland >>>

14.01.2010
"SÜT"
W.U. - Nürnberger Nachrichten >>>

14.01.2010
Im Schilf: Türkische Mythen
Daniela Sannwald - Tagesspiegel >>>

14.01.2010
Zwischen Tradition und Moderne
Frank Olbert - Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger >>>

14.01.2010
Milch und Poesie
Marieke Steinhoff - Schnitt >>>

14.01.2010
Der türkische Autorenfilm "Süt": Klare, poetische Bilder im Kino
Peter Fuchs - www.brash.de >>>

13.01.2010
Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts
Rüdiger Suchsland - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung >>>

13.01.2010
Jesusmäßiges Lichtspiel
Lucas Foerster & Ekkehard Knörer - www.perlentauer.de >>>

13.01.2010
Süt
Manfred Riepe - www.epd-film.de >>>

13.01.2010
Süt - Milch Ein Filmereignis
www.gastrosophie.eu >>>

12.01.2010
"Robert Bresson ist mein Meister"
Thorsten Funke - www.critic.de >>>

11.01.2010
Das Schweigen Anatoliens
www.on3-radio.de >>>

02.09.2008
Milk (Sut)
Lee Marshall - Screen International >>>

Tunca Arslan - Empire Magazine
Milk is a masterwork; much above the standards of our cinema. It perfectly meets our expectations of the director. It is hard to find an error in it. It maintains a rhythm particular to the film where everybody makes best of himself and minimalist language is well deserved.

Ayça Çiftçi - Altyazi Magazine
We come to know with Milk that Egg is the present of Yusuf. The other two installments of the trilogy is a recollection of past events while still standing in Egg. That's why Milk takes place in a dreamy atmosphere thus connecting dreams and memories. Like dreams memories take us somewhere far from our daily conscious. Maybe that's the reason behind this countryside story; countryside is the best place for a narrative searching for the left out, neglected, out of the limelight side of our soul.

Ayça Çiftçi - Altyazi Magazine - Interview with Semih Kaplanoğlu
"Making room for another moment within the moment."
Apart from the name, milk has multiple meanings in the film; represents the mother, the detachment, source of income and something that lures the snake out.
Milk is everything indeed. Two cups are offered to the prophet Muhammad, in the night of his ascension to heavens; there is milk in one and there is wine in the other one. He prefers the milk. "Because man has drunk the wine" he says. Milk is important. It is important in many ways.

Burhan Özgen
Profound Thoughts
Yusuf's quest is for present and future. He appears as a character much detached from his surroundings. We could feel the rupture or in other words the incidents that made him who he is in Egg. Yet we will find the answer to what happened in milk.

Esra Yalazan - Taraf
The scenes, powerful in its slow pace blended with silence, take us to tragic stories that are familiar yet far from us.

Haşmet Babaoğlu - Sabah
One establishes a different relationship with Kaplanoğlu's films. You don't try to comprehend it. You live it straightforward. You get affected...It is a different cinema...Without showing a single sexual action being able to imply the overwhelming power of sexuality in our lives.

Erman Ata Uncu - Radikal
Monotone Rhythm and a Turbulent Soul
When Kaplanoğlu turns his camera on the countryside, does he show us the depression, the monotone rhythm where every other day is the same? Or is it the consistent anxiety created by the character Melih Selcuk is playing? Indeed what Milk shows us is that tranquility and anxiety are not mutually exclusive.

Mustafa Emin Büyükcoşkun - Dünya Bizim
The Prophetic Drink: Milk
What is your point of view regarding motherhood, the image of the mother?
In the absence of the father his mother acting for the father as well becomes something of a saintly figure, symbol of purity and chastity, especially in the eyes of the son. On the other hand when her marriage to another man is concerned the boy feels helpless and abandoned, as he doesn't know what to do in his ongoing despair.

Celil Civan - www.kafaayari.com

Milk: Countryside as an allegory
Rather than drawing down provinces to a negative metaphor it creates a image with lots of connotations open to plural readings.

Alin Taşçıyan - Star

Of Waining
A lyric film woven with profound symbols is a treasure box for filmgoers...The most curious part abut the film is the milk-snake relation. Representing medicine or evil almost in every culture snake is regarded as God or guide. No matter what he is, he is the connection between life and death. The striking opening scene of "milk" where a snake comes out of the mouth reminds the stories in Mesnevi by Rumi or Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche where somebody swallows a snake by mistake...

Atilla Dorsay - Sabah
A Draft on a Genius Film
Milk is a surprising film. It's aloof and cold yet it has a genius sparkling. It's more difficult than Kaplanoğlu's previous films yet it puts the stake higher...It escalates him on the level of auteur, a creative moviemaker, an artist. This film depicting early life of Yusuf the lead character in Egg, is full of wonders in many ways.

Janet Barış - Taraf
Growing up on the brink of corruption
Milk is a film about pain...The pain Yusuf feels as he comes of age although not manifested in actions is transferred to the audience sliding through the images without making it explicitly dramatic. On the other hand very often used metaphors increase the density of the film as well.

Nihal Bengisu Karaca - Zaman
Milk-White Desparation
Those of you who have watched Egg would remember tha shepherd dog that enforced Yusuf to face his escapism thus persuade him to stay. There are animals who tell different things in Milk. For instance the scene where Yusuf brings home the fish he caught while his mum is happily plucking the goose the man she loves had shot. In the scene of dead fish trying to outwin a dead goose Kaplanoğlu makes a picture so powerful so much so that we feel that we have seen Yusuf's desparation on fish's face. While the wet and lumpish fish becomes the personification of the wounded heart of a man the flying feathers of the goose perfectly reflects the mother's joy of womanhood, which was suspended for some time.

Erman Ata Uncu - Radikal
"I care about the young men living in rural Turkey, neither studying nor working in the field, the worries and issues they have with their mothers, sisters or girlfriends" says Semih Kaplanoğlu as he focuses on a young man suffocated in countryside in his film Milk which is enlisted in Venice.
The second installment of the trilogy that was screened in the competition section of 65.Venice Film Festival is very much simplified in terms of technique. We follow the life of ah 18-year-old Yusuf (starring a first-timer with an impressive performance, Melih Selcuk) in Tire. The solitary language of the film is not an obstacle for understanding deliriums of Yusuf who is living with his mum.

Ali Murat Güven - Yeni Şafak
Far from the madding crowd... A poetic film that will soothe your soul... Don't miss it. But let's have a deal: Milk will not suit your taste instead you will adjust your taste to Milk (if you are keen movie lover).

Uğur Vardan -Radikal
And Yusuf, and His Mum and the Milk-Cans
Although Milk rolls on in the present it is kind of promoting the "everybody lives its own present" due to different concerns of mother and the son. Yusuf is blown away as a member of a patriarchal society as he wants to dissolve in the tranquility of literature. Awkward in his relations with fellow youngsters, humiliated by exemption from military service, he loses the only side he can turn to, his mother.

Serdar Akbıyık -Star Gazetesi
Milk by Semih Kaplanoğlu is a very significant film so much so that you can't grphp the new spirit of Turkish cinema if you skip it. You will adore Basak Koklukaya and Melih Selcuk starring in the film.

Of course intellectual audience well be more readily consuming Kaplanoğlu's films yet rural people can also identify with it as they will find pieces from their lives. Because it's the life, emotions and dilemmas of a little town's people that is reflected on the silver screen...Every film although complimentary to each other is an individual work. That's the quality I liked most in these films.

Erkan Aktuğ - Radikal
Milk helps the studies
The lead actor Melih made his way to the film through a flyer he saw in the film center at school. "I was in the summer school. When I was going to the canteen in the break I saw this "actor wanted" flyer. I thought about it in the canteen and decided to give a call. Not because I wanted to be an actor but I wanted to see the film environment."

Esin Küçüktepepınar - Sabah
Milk perfectly matches with the connotations of its name. It tells something about child innocence and how we can't break away from mother unlike the umbilical cord.

Ali Koca - Zaman
What is the state of mind of Yusuf?
He is so lonely. Poetry was partially cherished when I was young. But it's not as such now. The youth in the countryside doesn't find anybody to talk to. Along Turkey's modernization process people's quest for the truth is expressed as well. Turkey's situation is very much like Yusuf's situation. He is stranded in between, doesn't know what to do. He cannot go on, cannot turn back either.
Banu Bozdemir -Cinedergi
"All of us is in the countryside, in the periphery..." Egg follows up Milk as Milk follows up Egg...Semih Kaplanoğlu seats himself right in the middle of the countryside in Milk, the second installment to Egg. Gloomy imagery, emptiness, isolation, motions and joys particular to the countryside continue in this film too...Milk looks at today's town from today's city in the mood of 80s.

Kerem Akça-Habertürk
One Step Forward
Kaplanoğlu has professionally and universally grphped what a boy Yusuf's age in Anatolia would feel. So he brings out his most mature work over the past few years. You should better see this arc de triumph work. Because it shows how far Turkish cinema has come. Thank you Semih Kaplanoğlu!

Serdar Akbıyık - Gnctrkcll
The transformation in the cosmopolitan is faster compared to rural areas. There is an air of 80s in Milk. It seems like the town has frozen there. Could you elaborate more on not transforming and the slow pace there?

This is what I aimed at. The film is narrating the past in the present tense. This is how I wanted. Because past is still living with us. I built the setting from that point of view. There are places like that in rural areas anyway. You see something so old and a brand new building or factory sprouting just beside. The people get moving from here to there. For instance, there are deserted neighborhoods, beautiful houses, not very comfy maybe. People leave them and move to apartment flats.

Şenay Aydemir -Referans Gazetesi
When you grphp the feeling of the film Milk offers you a splendid joy to watch. Through the end Kaplanoğlu disperses from the linear narrative and adopts more scattered and minimalist style...While this choice would make the film a hard-bite for average audience it will earn its worthy place in film history if not in the box office.

Fırat Yücel -Altyazı
Kaplanoğlu doesn't force in metaphysical phpects into life searching for implausible coincidences behind every incident...He looks into life as it is and finds whatever he does not in extraordinary merits but in ordinary ones life features,

Enver Gülşen -Derin Düşünce
The soul is in retrospect in Mllk like in every great work of art. It is a heartfelt imagery poetry by a poet. Kaplanoğlu's films feature prologues very much like Rumy's opening couplets. Although they seem irrelevant at first glance like in Rumy's works it is the peak where everything flows down the stream from there like in a great waterfall.