‘Yellow Letters’ Berlinale Review: Where Art and Politics Collide

In one of those faintly ironic situations that film festivals seem to produce on a regular basis, the same jury presided over by Wim Wenders—which had suggested that “art and politics shouldn’t be mixed”—ended up awarding the Berlin Golden Bear to Yellow Letters, a film in which art and politics are inextricably intertwined. Perhaps as a way of deflecting the criticism that came from nearly every corner, the jury felt compelled to subtly walk things back by honoring this Turkish-German co-production.

The shift wasn’t quite as radical as it might seem. The new film by İlker Çatak—director of the Oscar-nominated The Teachers’ Lounge—does place Turkey’s political situation at the center of the story, but it does so in such broad, nonspecific terms that it could just as easily be about any country sliding toward authoritarianism, fighting “multiple wars,” and targeting dissenters—even on social media. There are no names, no recognizable figures, no concrete details beyond the occasional Ukrainian or Palestinian flag drifting through protest scenes. It all feels more like a shell than a fully realized political landscape.

Çatak uses this atmosphere of political tension primarily as a backdrop—and a trigger—for the family drama at the film’s core. Shot in Germany, with Berlin and Hamburg standing in for Ankara and Istanbul (a substitution the film openly acknowledges through on-screen titles), it begins with the premiere of a political stage play written and directed by Aziz (Tansu Biçer) and starring his wife Derya (Özgü Namal), both stars of Turkey’s state theater circuit. After the performance, Derya retreats to her dressing room and refuses to step out for a photo-op with an important government official. What seems like a minor gesture quickly opens the floodgates to something closer to horror.

Aziz—whose main job, and best-paying one, is as a university teacher—is soon suspended along with a group of colleagues deemed critical and rebellious. From there, the dominoes begin to fall: the state theater is forced to cancel the play; Derya is dismissed; their presence becomes unwelcome in their own apartment building; Aziz’s office is vandalized; strangers appear to follow them, even lingering outside their home. With no work and no income, the family has little choice but to move to Istanbul to live with Aziz’s mother—a decision that also means pulling their teenage daughter Ezgi (Leyla Smyrna Cabas) out of school and into a household where, despite the grandmother’s apparent warmth, she feels profoundly disconnected to her (something the film insists upon but never quite dramatizes).

Concerned about their daughter’s future—whether she’ll be able to attend a private school or continue her guitar lessons—Aziz and Derya begin adjusting to their new reality. He takes a job as a taxi driver; she reluctantly auditions for roles in TV series and soap operas, something she had always avoided in favor of more “serious” acting work. At the same time, they try to recover their former positions or build new ones within the independent theater scene. Nothing comes easily, and the strain gradually erodes the family’s internal equilibrium—both within the marriage and in their relationship with the fiercely independent Ezgi.

Çatak opens the film as a political thriller. As the bad news piles up—and its underlying causes remain frustratingly opaque beyond a few public statements and social media criticisms—the sense of menace grows. But the director’s real interest lies elsewhere: in charting how this kind of pressure reshapes everyday life for this family. The film is at its strongest during its first hour, as this refined, bourgeois couple is forced to borrow money, take jobs they consider beneath them, and interact with people far removed from their cultural milieu.

Like many recent films, Gelbe Briefe eventually decides to raise the stakes in terms of tension and suspense in ways that feel entirely out of step with what came before: forced, arbitrary, dramatically unearned. What begins as a measured, at times perceptive portrait of a family forced to reinvent itself under political pressure suddenly tries to morph into a thriller—and even into an erratic marital melodrama. The shift is clumsy, skipping necessary emotional beats and introducing implausible situations solely to accelerate the pacing. Up to a point, the charisma of the leads—especially Namal—holds things together. Eventually, though, even that isn’t enough.

Worse still, the political context—initially so central—gradually recedes into the background, as if it were never all that important to begin with. A key scene makes this painfully clear: Aziz abandons a court hearing in Ankara and returns to Istanbul because his daughter has had a minor, inconsequential argument with her grandmother. The film’s priorities are unmistakable. The motif of family members withholding crucial information from one another is handled with similar arbitrariness: it lacks narrative logic but conveniently fuels conflict. When a filmmaker is willing to discard credibility in pursuit of dramatic effect, the entire structure begins to collapse. It doesn’t completely ruin Yellow Letters, but it does flatten it—rendering it pedestrian, manipulative, and false. Which is a shame, because there’s clearly a better film struggling to emerge from within it.