Sultan, who defies fate in the light of Rıfat Ilgaz...

Hilal Özdemir

While browsing through digital platforms to see what's new, I came across the film Mukadderat, which won awards at last year's Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival.

The 2024 film Mukadderat, with a screenplay by Erdi Işık and directed by Nadim Güç, won the Best Film award at the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, while Nur Sürer was honored with the Best Actress award and Osman Sonant received the Best Supporting Actor award.

The film begins with the death of the husband of Sultan (Nur Sürer), who lives in Cide, Kastamonu.

Family members, relatives, and neighbors gather for the funeral.

The day after an ordinary funeral, while everyone is preoccupied with their own troubles at the breakfast table, the atmosphere freezes when Sultan suddenly announces that she wants to get married.

Afterward, Sultan's struggle to exist as a woman begins.

The film also pays tribute to the master writer from Cide and our country's esteemed intellectual, Rıfat Ilgaz. As Sultan sits next to the statue of Rıfat Ilgaz, lost in thought about her future, one cannot help but think of Ilgaz's book Sarı Yazma (Yellow Scarf), in which he recounts the struggles of the women of Cide (and Anatolian women in general).

Sultan: You wouldn't have said anything if your father wanted to get married.

In Mukadderat, we watch Sultan's rebellion against the 'mukadderat' (fate, destiny) imposed on women in town life. While the film questions the pressure traditions create on women, it also focuses on the background of traditional values in the context of family, kinship, and inheritance.

Refik: You don't necessarily need a man to experience a second spring. I learned to fish after this age. My second spring is fishing. You will find yours too.

Sultan, who wants to create a 'second spring' in her life by finding a partner with whom she can breathe for the rest of her days, first knocks on the door of her childhood sweetheart, Rüstem, to get married. However, finding no hope there, Sultan later meets Muharrem, a market vendor introduced by her friend Hanife. They don't warm up to each other at their first meeting, and Sultan leaves empty-handed once again. Finally, Sultan meets Refik, who will enable her to look at life from a different perspective. Refik tells her that she doesn't need a man for a second spring and that she can be happy by doing the things she loves.

While Sultan initially thinks she can only fight for her existence against traditional closed-society values by being a man's wife, she becomes convinced by the inspiration she receives from Refik that she can achieve her "individual liberation" without a man in her life.

She takes her first step toward economic independence by selling what she harvests from her field at the market. Then, she starts her own "second spring" by turning the upper floor of her house into a guesthouse. However, she struggles with the endless town gossip during this process.

The fact that screenwriter Erdi Işık is from Cide ensures that the culture and social dynamics of Cide are successfully reflected in the film.

Another issue we must address in the film is the division of inheritance. The characters we need to mention at this point are Sultan's daughter Reyhan (Aslıhan Gürbüz) and her son Nevzat (Osman Sonant). Reyhan is a woman who studied in Istanbul and continued to live there after getting married. Nevzat is someone who lives with his family in Cide and runs a coffeehouse. Their concern is to divide the inheritance left by their father among themselves. After his death, their father left behind a barren field and 50,000 liras in the bank. He left the majority of the field to his son, a small portion to his daughter, half of the money in the bank to Sultan on the condition that she 'does not remarry,' and the remaining half to his grandchildren.

Reyhan cannot accept that her brother gets more property. Nevzat constantly complains that he was the one who was always by his parents' side, that his father never even patted him on the head, and that he couldn't get an education. Reyhan, on the other hand, says that she took her parents to the best hospitals in Istanbul and that she was the one who took the best care of them.

In general, the film reflects the perspective on women in small towns and the inheritance disputes between children with a clear language.

Nur Sürer, who said in an interview that she was troubled by the lack of stories written for women in cinema, says: "While talking to Erdi, I complained about the lack of stories written for women our age. 'Do we always have to play the grandmother, the great-grandmother, the aunt, the great-aunt? Why isn't a story written about us like in French or Italian cinema?' He said, 'Nur, if I write something, will you play it?' I said, 'Of course I will,' and that's how our adventure began."

Mukadderat rebels against its literal meaning. It does so without breaking or destroying; the chaos at the breakfast table where Sultan announces her desire to marry at the beginning of the film gives way to a dinner at the finale where everyone understands each other, finds common ground, and treats men and women as equals.

The barren town life, trapped in traditional family values and gossip in the corners of coffeehouses, contrasts with the vitality of Cide, which gives the joy of living with its lush green landscapes and the clarity of its deep blue waters.

The fate imposed on women in the town, the fate of the geography, the fate imposed on individuals by the family structure... Mukadderat is a powerful production that defies fate, where the actors do justice to their roles.