09/02/2014 - Turkish director Melisa Önel's first feature film, Seaburners, is a pessimistic drama with elliptical storytelling

Seaburners, the opening film of Berlinale's Forum section and the first feature by the Turkish writer-director Melisa Önel, does not offer much hope for its characters and puts the viewer in a sombre mood. This is achieved through a non-linear narrative structure and dark, drab images of a harsh winter by the seaside.

Set on the Black Sea coast, the film tells the story of Hamit (Timuçin Esen), a man in his late 30s who is short on money and, as becomes clear later in the story, luck. A member of a human-trafficking gang, he lives in a borrowed hut belonging to his boss and quarrels every day with Mehmet (Ahmet Rifat Sungar), a younger member of the gang who gets reprimanded every time Hamit does something the boss does not approve of – which seems to be almost everything.

However, there is one positive aspect of his life: a passionate relationship with Denise (Croatian star Mira Furlan, last seen in With Mum), a foreign botanist temporarily in the Black Sea region for research purposes. However, she does not know about Hamit's job, and when one night he has to drive a truck carrying seven refugees from North Africa or the Middle East who are trying to reach Europe, his phone dies, which gets him into trouble with both Denise and his boss.

A large part of the film takes place at night, and these nocturnal images by Meryem Yavuz and Bulgaria's Julian Atanassov (Eastern Plays [+see also:
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Seaburners was produced by Istanbul-based companies Bulut Film and Yedi Film.