Kosmos
£10 / £8 Concessions / £7 ICA Members
Award-winning Turkish director Reha Erdem’s (Times and Winds) latest offering, set in an isolated town in the snow-swept tundra of a north-eastern Turkey, is an ambitious, arresting work. Animalistic, childlike, and quasi-messianic, its titular protagonist is an itinerant stranger who emerges from the wilderness and is hailed as a miracle-worker after he saves a young boy from drowning, only to then develop a profoundly ambivalent relationship with the wary townspeople.
The film is an overflowing cauldron of ideas, of spooling narrative threads: Kosmos’ mischievous exploits mingling with religious and political allegory, and playing out against a spectacular visual landscape. Like its peripheral setting, the film’s magic-realist style seems to occupy a hinterland between narrative and experimental cinema. At times inscrutable, frequently stunning, always imaginative, Kosmos proves an enthralling find.
Dir. Reha Erdem, 2010, Bulgaria/Turkey, Turkish with English subtitles, 122 mins.
Cast: Sermet Yesil, Türkü Turan, Serkan Keskin.
Our cinema programme is frequently updated with new screenings, so please check our listings regularly.