Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011)
In the dead of night, a group of men—among them, a police commissioner, a prosecutor, a doctor and a murder suspect—drive through the Anatolian countryside, the serpentine roads and rolling hills lit only by the headlights of their cars. They are searching for a corpse, the victim of a brutal murder. The suspect, who claims he was drunk, can't remember where he buried the body. As night wears on, details about the murder emerge and the investigators own secrets come to light. In the Anatolian steppes nothing is what it seems; and when the body is found, the real questions begin.
This masterful, radically revisionist take on the police procedural from acclaimed director Nuri Bilge Ceylan won the Grand Prix at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.
It is epic in its aims and achievements yet modest in its resources: some superb actors, stunning landscapes and a resonant, understated script.Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune, 2012
A gorgeously shot crime story with emotionally layered characters and an indelible atmosphere of unease.Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail, 2012
Turn the movie this way, and it's a police procedural that's tragicomically heavy on minutiae while slyly suggesting that official evidence always lies. Turn it that way, and it's an existential fairy tale set in a nocturnal netherworld.Ella Taylor, NPR